c3

Stone Soup? She Asked.

Aayla snapped awake in the morning and groaned. She was so warm and comfortable. Her lekku were wandering over something soft, warm, and smooth and one of them was wrapped around something the perfect diameter and just rigid enough. She blinked and blushed realizing where she was and what her lekku were doing. She stilled them, then slowly withdrew, resisting the urge to giggle. He would freak! He averted his eyes from her nude form and here her lekku were having sex with him. She sighed as she broke contact and he went back to being a blank in the force. He had been a solid firm presence last night, more than he had been yesterday. What was the difference? Touch perhaps? She tugged at the shirt and sighed as she padded to the fresher. She didn't want to destroy it but she couldn't get it off, either over her head or around her shoulders. She left it on and kept the shorts on as well. It wasn't like they were going anywhere. Her exhaustion after twelve hours of work yesterday indicated she wasn't fully healed quite yet.

She walked out of the tent toward the front of the cave and saw the first contact capable protocol droid standing there. She opened its back panel, erased its ownership data and reinitialized it with herself as its owner. Thank you Chancellor. She spent some time working on its mission parameters and functions and making sure it was ready to record everything her human did nearly as well as an archivist droid. She took it back in the tent and stood it in the large room.

She did some stretches and was bent over wide legged and head down when he came from the bedroom. She smiled at him upside down and he chuckled then blushed. She rolled her eyes and stood up. He walked into the kitchen area and she followed with the first contact droid. The droid introduced itself as he worked at the cooking surface and he nodded and said "Harry Potter" pointing to himself. The droid introduced her as Aayla'secura and he made an effort at it. She beamed at him. He was taking the droid rather well. Oh she assumed he was from a primitive culture! Because he didn't speak basic perhaps? Aayla chastised herself a bit and watched. Breakfast proceeded with him holding up a thing and giving a name and demonstrating its use, while he named the technique he was using. Obviously not his first time working with someone who didn't know his language. The droid told him the name of the thing, or technique in basic.

He appeared surprised as the droid started putting together simple sentences by the time they were done with breakfast. Hmmm, maybe he was from a primitive culture. He made a few corrections to it as it improved. He led her to a cushioned table that had appeared in the main room and lay her down on it with her face in a hole. Her clothes vanished off her and he put something marvelous on her wounds and massaged them slowly and carefully with the droid attempting to translate but not quite there yet. She snuggled into the bench, table thing and as he eased down her back massaging lifted her bottom a bit. He obliged and very professionally worked those large muscle groups. He then smacked her sharply on her butt, cleaned her clothes, and turned his back then used the Force to vanish the clothes she was wearing again, as she dressed she rolled her eyes, again.

They took a walk outside with the droid translating more and more, then they went to see if the Clones had left and what they left. As it turned out they left a lot. Useful but near worn out vehicles, a scrap pile, a trash dump, and the odd piece of dropped kit, or item, lost in the rush to leave, No ammunition or weapons however, besides the ones they had stolen, all the usual detritus of war.

They went and checked the frigate. It was near brand new or a near new refit. Without checking its hull numbers it would be impossible to tell. The consular class had been in service for decades. During the war they had been refit as Frigates and Command ships. They spent some time on it and getting the droids and other equipment he had moved under or close around it on board. Harry then walked out and started shrinking vehicles, equipment, and scrap and making them disappear. When they finally left the only thing left at the base was the stabilized, rammed earth, landing field. The jungle would take that back without droids to keep the brush and creepers trimmed. They went back to the cave in the frigate and Aayla chuckled, still amazed, at the tiny piles of scrap and the shrunken vehicles and things. Most of it would probably eventually end up in the mass converter but, they needed that too. Aayla had flown the frigate with the droids helping back to the cave. Harry watched intently. As they lifted they saw the Droid army frozen in the regimented ranks still. Aayla frowned. That was not good.

They set the ship down. Harry brought out the packs and they divided everything between the tent and the ship in case they had to flee and leave one or the other. The droid got better and better at translating and then suddenly made a leap like they sometimes did. "Master Secura, he is actually using a language much like basic, simply a different alpha numeric notation system and the language has drifted. One or the other, his 'English' or basic has picked up words from other languages as well. Perhaps both." It turned to Harry and said the same thing in his language. Harry looked thoughtful.

They took another walk that evening and Harry stopped to pick up a few plants and samples of some wildlife, mostly insects, he summoned. It all went into a small pouch at his waist. Another of those bottomless bags of his.

They had a long, droid facilitated, conversation about Magic or the Force. Harry grinned a lot. Aayla ended up rolling her eyes a lot. She did get shown the wards and why the cave was invisible to those not keyed into where and what it was by Harry.

Harry made his 'flip books' to explain quite a few things. He made lunch while Aayla went over all the ones he made, his map, and formulated more questions.

That evening Aayla brought a shirt and shorts and stood in front of him and he waved and changed her clothes. He got her sitting down and pulled out one of his trunks and got out a crystal. He, through the droid, explained what it did and that if she could clear her mind of everything but her memories of Basic the crystal could copy them and then he could use it to learn the language. At the price of a bad headache for the learner.

Aayla nodded. They had this facility at the temple but most Jedi avoided it. It was a really bad headache, that could in fact affect your performance for days. It was also done by a device powered by electricity, not the Force. She wanted to see this.

Aayla entered a meditation and Harry affixed the crystal and then left her to it and went and talked to the droid. Or rather had the droid show him the frigate and its systems again, with a R2 unit to explain, and the protocol droid to translate R2 to human.

Harry lay down that evening after their baths, where she teased him a little more to make him turn the cute pink color, and he affixed the crystal to his forehead.

Aayla woke up sweating and tearful again and he lay like a lovely warm rock. She contemplated it for a minute and then had a thought. She got up and went to the medical supplies. The R2s had cataloged and stored all the stuff they had stolen, which Harry had dumped out of his trunk in a sort of slow motion fountain of stuff, and then went to see the medical droid to see what the results of its scans of Harry were. She had explained what the medical droid was by having it scan him. He had been fascinated.

SSDV

The next morning Harry opened his eyes and smiled then grimaced. He stumbled to a trunk, opened the appropriate compartment and took a pain potion. He closed his eyes and sighed, when he opened them again he was looking at an upside down twi'lek face between spread legs with a gorgeous ass over it. He laughed "Good morning Aayla."

She whipped upright, lekku flying, spun around and jumped on him. Taking him to the ground. By noon Harry felt he needed a nap and he was talked out. Aayla quirked an eyebrow at him, and he put the last memory back in his head from the pensieve they had been using. She stood up, drug him out of their cave, and let him go, then just walked "So four wives."

AN: From Grammarist, In all main varieties of English, dragged is the standard past tense and past participle of the verb drag. Drug is a dialectal variant that appears in many areas of the U.S. Though drug is common in these areas and cannot be considered wrong, itmight be seen as out of place in more formal writing, where the traditional dragged is always the safer choice. From me, I don't consider fanfiction formal writing. There that should fix that. All you grammar Nazi's can go back to your perches now.

Harry sighed "Who I can't get back to right now. I have to live my life here and now. I'll still work a bit each day at getting home but I think the first order of business is survival. For that you are going to have to tell me what is going on here."

Aayla nodded "You have read the history, well, the modern one of the last fifty years or so, while I was in those memories. I suspect Chancellor Palpatine is a dark lord, much like those you fought. How we missed his rise, his master, and all the ones that have gone before for the last millennium, I don't know. We believed them to be extinct really. We won't be able to talk to the Order, if they survived, until we are safer. I hope that can be soon. Meanwhile we lay low here for a few days and then go see what we can see. I need to get my star fighter rings. Well mine and Bariss's. We will put the Starfighters and the rings in the frigate."

Harry nodded "He shows the signs. I wonder why they always want to be in charge. It's like they don't realize people are just a pain in the arse generally. Or that the more control you have the more decisions you have to make for the idiots. Don't even get me started about governments, that's just hiring idiots, to watch idiots be idiots, and pick them up and wipe their snotty noses and kiss their boo boos, until it all dissolves into a heaving pile of uselessness, because the idiots you hired the other idiots to watch think they have rights, besides the right to die. Meanwhile, there are some more plants and animals to be collected here and you need to finish healing which I didn't expect for weeks not days, however at the rate you are healing it looks sooner rather than later."

Aayla smiled at him smiling at her "Feel better with that off your chest? You can teach me how to manipulate the Force as you do. And I can teach you not to be a cynic."

"Yes I can teach you magic." Harry smirked. This was already an old argument between them.

Aayla turned, grabbed his hand, and drug him toward the cave "Hungry. We need to spend some time planning too."

Harry nodded "A result of the healing I think. And yes we do."

Aayla took up a seat at the island in front of the food preparation area, and they spent some time running over spices that he had and those they had acquired at the base before the clones pulled out. Harry finally nodded "Like an Indian but not like a Thai. So spicy but not necessarily hot. Ok I can do that."

Aayla for her part showed him some of the meats and vegetables and how she knew to cook them and laughed "The meat is blue but the blood is red."

Harry sighed "No worse than that paper white bird meat I guess."

"The bird will change colors when cooking it. It is a mark of great skill in a chef to be able to prepare it and have it remain that color." Aayla offered.

"First time boiling was the mark of a great chef. We are trying it my way." Harry nodded and got to work cooking all the samples of things they had gotten out and handled. The bird turned a spectacular golden brown. Aayla raved about it. She had never eaten it when it changed color before, well besides when she killed one in the field and cooked it herself, that was usually closer to black.

After lunch Harry sat Aayla down for a lesson in finding her core, and occlumency as a part of that. He had put a child stone on her already, like he did all wounded. He carried a moke skin pouch full of them. All medical personnel did. Most troop leaders as well. Sometimes wounded couldn't suppress their aura. Plus, you never knew what you would find on a battlefield.

He sat and sped read a padd as fast as his occlumency let him. That was basically as fast as he could move the pages. He would digest it tonight, probably.

Aayla gave him another crystal of another language. Her native language, Ryl. Harry assured her would do the same for her once she was fully healed. She got another massage and padded off to bed a noodle. She, or rather her people, had no taboo on nudity. Harry flicked the shorts and shirt on her as she disappeared in the bedroom. He didn't have a taboo on it either, but that was a lot of hot blue woman. A woman who was apparently in a celibate monastic order. He didn't mind the sleeping together, that was actually nice, but he wasn't going to go any farther without more of an OK than flirting.

Aayla woke up in the night again, and just lay looking up at the night sky of Felucia. Harry had fixed the windows and ceiling of the tent she had not known had been broken. It was nice. She realized what her lekku were doing again and giggled. She was going to get a face full if she wasn't careful. Plus the stones were wearing him out and he was generally very tired still. She would have to talk to him, before she woke him up with her lekku one night when they weren't doing the stones, and he was less tired. He was a perfect gentleman, with a beautiful, durasteel hard, warm, penis. No, stop that! Lekku had a mind of their own.

She slipped from the bed, out to the com link in the cave, and called the medical droid. She had gotten Harry scanned again today, and a droid trundled in with some further vaccinations and other injections. The droid had had some kind of mental break down when it scanned him this time, apparently it had thought it's first scans were wrong and had run a full diagnostic, and they had had to tell it why he had all these things in his blood and what they were. The droid got very excited about it all. Aayla had gone in the pensieve to see those memories and been a bit awed really. They had a long discussion over his life. Aayla just didn't want him getting sick right now, so she worked with the medical droid and got them another blood sample and moved on. She could come back to giant snakes and spiders later.

SSDV

Harry woke up in the morning and went through the same routine as yesterday, got the same view and laughed as she leapt on him again when he spoke to her in Ryl.

The pair spent another day talking. And trying to make plans. While he studied and she went to the pensieve theater. Harry was also reading like a fiend on a padd Aayla had shown him how to use that was linked to the frigates very up to date memory core and working to figure out how to protect the ship better or even if he could. She was a bit in awe of how fast he ripped through material. He shrugged "Occlumency. One of the side benefits."

He took some scrap and tested weapons on it, after ending the shrinking charm on the fighters while Aayla and a droid taking them to get the rings, while he waited nervously. Sitting around fretting was not something he did well. He even used some large stones, carved runes on them, activated the schemes, levitated the stones and had a droid shoot them with the turbo lasers from the frigate. He grunted when the runes somewhat worked, well, once he summoned the stones back and examined them or the pieces of them. He went back to doing rune schemes and plotting, erh planning. He stopped when Aayla and the droid brought the star fighters in, then shrunk and engorged them twice so she could run diagnostics to see if magic hurt them. Or rather he did that to Bariss's red one which was apparently now his.

This brought about an impromptu lesson in the shrinking and enlarging charm and where the weight went which led to arithmancy which led to him digging out the third-year books on arithmancy, explaining the alphabet, numbers, and pronunciation to the droid, and getting it started translating. Harry dug out the Hogwarts books and references for the droid, and set up a library in an expanded stateroom on the frigate so the droid could work at its own pace. What he didn't know was that the droid was putting the books in, or rather on the holonet. In a password protected section it gave Aayla and the astromechs the password to, but still. It was a bit like the cloud back on Earth. How could you be sure it was protected? Aayla rolled her eyes and explained it to him three times. He didn't seem any happier "Jennifer Lawrence found out about data safety."

Aayla frowned "Who is Jennifer Lawrence?" Harry blushed. She made him produce the memory. Aayla decided this Jennifer was very pretty, but she had better breast. Firmer, less sag as well. Better legs and butt too. Jennifer should exercise more. Sparring would help her.

Meanwhile big breakfast, lunches and dinners were consumed. Aayla found she liked American breakfast sausage, at least the spicy variety Harry shied away from. Harry found several fruits and the odd blue meat he liked in their pilfered supplies.

Aayla's massage happened and this time Harry put clothes on her as she got up. She, as was now traditional, woke in the night and grinned ruefully at what her lekku were doing as Harry learned Huttese. The language of the criminal underworld of the Republic. She checked, got the next series of injections, and gave them to him. She was a bit afraid of those stones at this point, if they could do that, keep Harry asleep with a lekku wrapped around him and stroking gently. He was normally preternaturally alert. And a huge prude, unless it was something medical.

She lay thinking as she settled back in after putting the memories away like Harry had told her. He had told her her mind would get them out and review them, but she should be sure to put them away after. Her mind palace, as he called it, was a library on her home world where she had hidden as a child and where she learned to read. It had small and twisting passages and niches for the old style data disk carved in the walls. It was a comforting place. Plus without the abilities her Lekku gave, it was near impossible for anyone but a Twi'lek to navigate.

She was nearly healed. He was teaching her, even if it was somewhat incidental and a bit haphazard. She would start teaching him her ways after tomorrow. It would be good to exercise again. Perhaps he could be a competent sparring partner. He had practiced with that sword enough in those memories.

SSDV

Aayla was pleased the way things were working out. They both gave in depth answers to questions, and the background if needed. It was a mutual learning experience. They were ranging farther afield from the cave and collecting more and more plants and animals.

Back in the cave he showed her the spells he used to analyze the things they collected and she showed him how to do it with the tools she had, or they had on the frigate.

What was not as satisfying was his ability to use the Force. To reach out to it. She was fairly sure the years of having to keep it contained were the problem. He could no longer just leave his shields down. Even with a stone on. It didn't stop him from using the Force like she did but it muted his ability. He could do it but it took conscious effort.

She on the other hand was struggling with her rudimentary mental shields. He said this was natural and it would be that way until she finished sorting her memories.

He had given her a purging potion too, he was concerned about the chemicals in her system. She had thought seriously about maiming him slightly when disgusting slime leaked from every orifice. The big lump had been sympathetic, attentive, and put her in the shower.

If she hadn't felt so much better that evening she might have maimed him. Well, that and he did a cleansing ritual which did a bit of the same things to him and took a purging potion. She asked him "Why are you doing this?"

Harry shrugged "I cast about forty killing curses. You don't have to hate to do it, but it is, hmm. Maybe it leads you there?"

Aayla nodded "Hate is one of the paths to the dark side."

Harry shrugged "So is not dealing with emotion. Any emotion really. It all has to be put in context and balanced. Killing curses though, they get easier if you hate. Then if you don't put the emotions away and deal with them on top of the physical by products, well it doesn't take long to overwhelm all but the most, impervious? Clueless? Occlumency or not. After that its a pretty quick spiral until it affects judgment and gets you killed. Maintain an even strain, that was what the troops said."

Aayla poked her tongue out at him, he was always having a go at the order over there stance on emotions. "I am done for the day until bedtime Master." She was hinting for her massage.

Harry smiled "All things in their time grasshopper. Hungry yet?"

"Urrgh." Aayla held her stomachs and blushed a bit. It was to soon after the purging draught.

Harry looked at the medical droids scans of her and went on a hunt with his hands, for the massage today. No one had ever been where his fingers and eyes had now traveled and it was like he was memorizing her for apparition coordinates. Or maybe a hyperspace lane. Oh it was all professional and like a healer, perhaps the best she had ever had but he had dove into the droids resources on twi'leks and then turned pleading eyes on her to let him find out how what he had learned felt. Aayla sat up after a bit warm, and damp. "Not hungry yet. Maybe in an hour or so."

Harry nodded absently and headed for the kitchen padd in hand. She rolled her eyes and followed him with her own padd. He studied as hard as anyone she had ever seen and with his occlumency he had nearly a hundred percent recall, the results were astounding. Right now he was planning how to take the plating off the frigate. So he could carve runes in the frame. At the same time he was plotting a ward scheme for it. Somewhere in there was a plan to do a rune string to conjure fuel. Deuterium. Heavy water he called it. It could be synthesized on Earth as well, so he had dug out a book that contained the method and was making that process into a rune array to be fed by another rune array that made the components of water. Since it wouldn't have to last long he was confident it would work. She wanted him to do it to the reactor of an AT TE, that was still functional, but worn out and not worth the fuel to freight it away from the planet when the Republic left. If it exploded they hadn't lost anything. It was one of the ones that had been field modified to an open command carrier. Now though even the command and control electronics had been stripped. It was essentially a reactor and generator with legs and a rudimentary droid brain to give it locomotion and guidance.

He cooked, read and scribbled notes all at the same time. She watched bemused. She took his plan for the frigate and started checking it and scheduling the work for the six astromechs. While she was at it she worked in some upgrades those ships had always needed, but who would take the hull plating off one to do it, outside a yard? She included some notes for him to do cooling, strengthening and impervious runes to weapons, engines, shield generators and emitters, and other select areas. They had tested several blasters and laser rifles to destruction getting the data they needed. Now it was a matter of scaling up.

After dinner Aayla surprised him "Lay down and I will massage you."

He hemmed and hawed until she put both fist on her hips arched a brow and her foot started tapping. His training from the wives kicked in at that point and he stripped and lay down. She went over him like he had gone over her calling the Force and directing it into him. She found enough knots of muscle to keep him awake.

He sighed when she was finished "Thank you. You do that better than I do."

Aayla laughed "Nope, and I can't do it to myself. Now hold still." She picked an injector up from the tray the medical droid had brought and Harry arched a brow. "You didn't have any of the immunizations all beings here get. I don't want you catching something. The medical droid is working on some of those weird bugs in your blood. Soon it will have shots for me, so you don't give me anything."

Harry nodded "The Colombian exchange." then winced, and stood when she was through. He gave her the puppy dog face and she snorted. He patted the bench and waved a cleaning charm on it and she smiled stripped and lay down. He didn't even blush. She grinned to herself. He got started and told her "I have the antibodies to quite a few things from where I was from. Got them late in life but still I got all the injections. Mundane and Magical. I'll have to get C five to translate a couple of epidemiology text for the medical droid."

She nodded "The Medical droid is working on it. It will undoubtedly have more questions for you, you will have to identify the antigens." She snuggled into the table and he melted her again. She padded off to bed with him following immediately tonight. Tonight she got a memory crystal of English. She was going to get English, French and German, the three earth languages he was competent in. Additionally, the vulgar Latin for spells he knew.

SSDV

Darth Sidious, former Republic Chancellor and now Emperor of the Galactic Empire surveyed his demesnes and screamed in rage, blasting another holo screen with force lightning.

Mace Windu had shown up mob handed and half of his Jedi had gone to the Senate to discuss the defeat and death of Grievous and the other half had come to his offices resulting in a pitched battle. During this the Jedi temple had been evacuated before he could get order 66 out. The Force was roiling. Order 66 looked a success though, until the reports trickled in and he could get a handle on the reality.

Less than a thousand Jedi had died. Substantially less, and they had inflicted massive casualties on the clones, going down fighting in every case. The Jedi were wreaking havoc on his forces on Coruscant, eliminating the vaunted 501st and Skywalker as an effective fighting force. The temple defenses were on full, and though the primary holonet was down, the secondary and tertiary nets, hundreds of them, were up and running, slicers were destroying any coherent picture he might present to the press.

Something had happened to the fleet as well, ship losses were staggeringly high. The CIS fleet and Droid army was awaiting orders. The only bright spark in this entire debacle.

Wait. He needed a fighting force and ships. He would send Skywalker to Mustafar to seize control of the droid armies and fleets, as soon as he was well enough to travel.

The inquisitors and acolytes would handle these slicers, and the bounty hunters would take care of the Jedi.

Yes, everything could be salvaged. The reason he had built in the layers of redundancy after all.

SSDV

Yoda was in full combat mode in the lower levels of Coruscant with the remainder of the Jedi who had attacked the Senate building and then fought a rear-guard action to allow as many Senators as possible to withdraw. The Red Guard had proved tougher than they had anticipated. They were decimated now however, and most of the Jedi in the galaxy were safe. Losses had been high, but not catastrophic, and the New 'Empire' had been punished severely.

Kashyyyk was in Wookie hands, Yoda having turned the Republic forces there into a fight with a CIS fleet in the system and off Kashyyyk. That drew the CIS forces back to space, and the Wookies had run a bit rampant over the skeleton force both sides of the conflict had left on the planet. The Wookies were now chasing down Republic ships and units.

The temple evacuation had gone according to Master Ti's plan, and the transports along with a hundred Jedi Starfighters, had left in convoy, cleared atmosphere, and then made it to the hyperspace lane, before the order Aayla Secura said was coming was issued. Something strange about that. Master Secura had never been known for visions before.

Now something must be done about the Sith Lord. This Empire he was trying to declare must not be allowed to flourish.

SSDV

Aayla drug Harry out of the cave in the early morning and got him started on exercise. He groaned like a teenage padawan. She rolled her eyes and was terrified to find most of the things she had thought were utter BS when they came from other Masters and Master Vos rolling out of her mouth. She was pleasantly surprised on the run though when he got tired, then started using the Force to keep up. She stopped at about the halfway point "Now since you have learned how to run, it is time for you to learn to jump." Harry, hands on knees and panting, eyed her. She huffed and jumped fifteen meters into a tree. He blinked. She jumped down and he frowned.

"Can you do that again please?" He asked.

Aayla opened her mouth and then saw his eyes glowing a bit. This was his Force sight. She leapt again then jumped down. He nodded and spent several minutes unsuccessfully jumping, just as she had gotten over her laughter, or was going to lose her composure and laugh out loud, he jumped and disappeared straight up. She gaped as she tilted her head and saw him a hundred meters or more in the air. She lost it when he screamed like a female youngling on the way down, then popped around with a series of sharp cracks until he righted himself, stopped flailing, and landed. A bit heavily truth be told. She schooled her features "So that is the force jump. Now we can make some time." She leapt away and felt him following in the Force. Not that she needed it as he was crashing through the trees like he had crashed through the understory at the start of the run. He smoothed out however.

Once back at the cave she nodded and drew her saber. He frowned and conjured a stick shaped like a saber but with a slight curve and took it in a two handed grip. She nodded checked her saber was on training setting and attacked. He lasted four slashes before he yelped as she got a stroke through his guard. She backed off and he nodded seriously "So the same as always, negative reinforcement training." He sighed.

She blinked and he made a charge that she fought off. And then tapped him across the shoulders making him growl. They continued for a half hour until she called a halt. "You never make a mistake more than once." She beamed at him.

He smiled tiredly "Nope, but I make them all once."

She grinned and left a trail of clothes to the shower and then a trail of water to the tub. He snorted and waved at her pants, top, headdress and boots and they picked themselves up, cleaned themselves, then folded themselves and landed on a bench off to the side. He stripped and got in the shower. She admired the view.

She blinked when he got in the tub. This was new. She rested not saying anything as he laid back and soaked. "You use magic to jump and land. Nearly identical to some other magic I already know. That's how I got the Force jump so fast. I have a feeling younglings don't normally get it as quick as that."

"No, normally it takes them being very frustrated. At least it did with me and all the Jedi I have spoken to." She got up to leave and found her ankle in his grip and then him up beside her from the tub and then on a knee at her feet. Her heart rate picked up. He summoned a brown flask and looked up at her "Dittany." He took a touch on his finger, and rubbed it along a scratch on her calf. He worked his way up her, applying the Force imbued liquid as he went, then silently handed the bottle to her taking a seat on the bench. She knelt and worked her way up his many more scrapes, scratches, and training saber burns after he pointed to them.

She watched fascinated as they faded nearly immediately. "This is good. We had many problems with fungus in wounds, even simple ones, on this world. Many troopers were out of action in medical from those infections."

Harry smiled "Yes, we learned the hard way about breaks in the skin in jungle environments as well. Dittany helps with skin and slightly deeper wounds. Anything more than that is beyond its ability really. There are other potions for other injuries."

Aayla smiled "So now I can sleep as I prefer, as you are no longer a prude?"

Harry rolled his eyes "Breakfast. Then we sort my trunks and your packs and add the stuff to our inventory. Well the stuff we liberated anyway." Aayla snorted at the 'liberated'.

SSDV

Shaak Ti was in a freighter she had acquired from a slaver in her first port off Coruscant, after she had freed the slaves, and taken them to the Wookie consulate. The vessel was in good condition overall, but It was a slave ship so was in a need of a good cleaning. She felt a nudge from the Force and dropped out of hyperspace heading in the direction the Force was urging her. She let the R2 unit land the ship as she Force leapt into the fight, just as the Master was struck down by one of the three persons with red bladed sabers he was fighting, as the Padawan fought off another. She ignited her saber immediately and waded into them. If there had not been three of them they would not have succeeded against the aged master of this padawan. She dispatched three quickly, recognizing two as Jedi, or former Jedi of low rank in the temple. The Padawan with her twin sabers and odd technique finished the fourth. The former Jedi Shaak recognized had been in the local Coruscant section. The other two she did not recognize. She snapped her saber off and moved to the padawan who was on her knees by her master, her eyes filled with tears.

The padawan was a young, healthy, female, Zabrak. Red skinned with red eyes, that were slightly off putting now in the advent of the rising of the Sith, but were common with her race and coloring. She appeared to be seventeen or eighteen. "Come Padawan. Let us reunite your master with the force."

Shaak kept the girl busy building a pyre, and then levitating her master to it, while she and the R2 stripped the bodies and their ship of anything useful. Resources were a key now. Then she stood with her as the flames consumed her former master. She could feel the Padawans pain and rage. "Your emotions are appropriate padawan. For this time." After the pyre had consumed the girls former Master Shaak nodded "Come, let us finish and leave here."

Shaak, the Padawan and the R2 unit collected anything of value they could find in the escape pod the Master and Padawan had landed in, and the ship belonging to the four inquisitors, as Shaak had found they were called. She had pulled their computers core memory, power, and processing units, and they left the bodies as the carrion they were.

The ship she had acquired being set up for one crewman operation, she let Maris Brood, as she had discovered the Padawan was named, use the guns and fly while she destroyed the inquisitor's ship. It took some effort, as she, or they and the astromech, had even taken its fuel and reaction mass.

SSDV

Aayla huffed at Harry laying frozen as she snuggled into his side nude. She flipped one of her lekku onto his chest and lay fading into sleep rapidly. Harry found sleep a little more slowly.

SSDV

Harry woke up with Aayla making upset noises and squirming a bit, and pulled her to his chest. They had forgotten the crystal last night. She stilled then awoke, as he had expected as the windows had lightened. She rolled over and smiled at him, and then got up. He closed his eyes making her chuckle.

As Aayla showered Harry cleaned the sheets and made the bed. She came in the lounge of the tent and started to pull him out the door, he stopped her and put his hands on her breast from behind over her top. She gasped and then moaned as the Force washed over her breast and upper torso. He said "Support charm. I noticed you were a bit sore yesterday."

Aayla nodded smiling "You have been trained very well." Harry snorted and herded her through the flap.

They exercised, ate, and did a plant and animal collection moving farther afield, via apparition this time, as he tried to talk to her about how to do it. Aayla was straining, and obviously making a face, as Harry was chuckling, when an Acklay stepped from the thorn trees at the edge of the field of immature mushroom trees they were in. Harry looked at the creature and Aayla snapped her head around as he had stopped chuckling "Acklay. Pack hunter. There will be others."

Harry nodded looking at the creature with narrowed glowing green eyes "Very magical too. Three more to its left deeper in the woods." The acklay charged, and a rock appeared from nowhere, smashing it to the ground. Harry waved, the rock disappeared, and the acklay shrank, he walked over, picked it up with a glove, that he got from one of his bottomless pockets, looked at the other acklay for a moment, walked back to the now open mouthed Aayla and took her arm spinning them back to the cave. Or in front of it. He trotted inside after dropping the acklay and ending the shrinking charm on it. He came back out with a roll of knives and a sack of flask. Aayla wrinkled her nose as he butchered the acklay for its magical parts. He talked her through the process, and why he did it by hand and with gloves and magically inert tools "A lot of the inherent magic of the creature can be corrupted by other magic. Some of this could be good for wands, some for potions, some for artifacts but it needs to be untouched by magic. I will have to start carrying my stuff with me on our little jaunts. Shrinking and enlarging charms are about the only thing you can use on magical plants or animals. Without it influencing them."

Aayla nodded "At least it isn't going to waste. We just kill them when they attack. It's nearly impossible to get away from one once it decides to hunt you. They are inedible as well, and somewhat resistant to light sabers."

Harry grinned "Not to big arse rocks though."

Aayla rolled her eyes. That afternoon, after she made Harry shower and change, they got stuck into the frigate.

They were panting in the heat until Harry did some work and they had a shade. A little more and they had an insect ward and cooling charms up. They still soaked through their clothes. Humidity control wards helped that some but they were after all working hard.

At the end of the day as the sun set Aayla set the droids to work and led into the cave, tent and bathroom leaving her traditional trail. She pulled Harry in the shower with her and then into the tub. She put her feet on his legs and sighed when he massaged them "I will have to meet whoever trained you and do something nice for her."

Harry chuckled "Hermione will think you are the best present ever. You and she can talk in numbers and symbols at each other all day."

Aayla nodded "French tonight." Harry liked to pretend he wasn't that bright. The things in his padd though made Aayla's head ache. Pan Galactic astrogation was simple next to rune array arithmancy.

Harry smiled and nodded "Yes ma'am."

After dinner, some conversation, and mutual massages, they got in bed and Aayla very precisely positioned him, to his amusement then lay down, settled in and said "Crystal please."

Harry nodded and held it to her forehead until it stuck "Good night." He watched as she drifted off and snorted at the pile of arms, legs, boobs, and lekku he was trapped in. He groaned as her left, dark blue, nipple hardened in her sleep and the aureole crinkled up. This was completely unfair he decided.

SSDV

Harry woke up and smiled. He slipped away and got a headache potion. He got back in the bed and waited. He wasn't so worried about his potion supply. This was one world of thousands, tens of thousands, of specie of flora and fauna with magic properties. Some of these already looked like potential replacements for common ingredients.

This whole plane or universe of the multiverse, whatever it was hopped, crawled, swam, ran and flew with magic. Raw and untouched or rather undirected but it was there. More things had magic in this plane than did not. It might take some experimentation but he was fairly sure he could produce potions from ingredients native to this plane. Aayla assured him there were billions of species of flora and fauna and a good percentage of them were 'imbued' with the Force.

Not only that, but Aayla had great confidence they could isolate and synthesize the active ingredients of his potions in a Force saturated area. He had his doubts about that one. They had never been able to synthesize magical ingredients at home but then the technology here was very advanced.

Today he was going to try her on wands. She had managed apparition and her occlumency was progressing in leaps and bounds and he had only had to help her once. Her memories of the time under that drug had unsettled her severely. Harry was just glad it was nothing near as bad as some of those Soviet conditionings he had read about. It was not near what they did to condition females. A little dancing and a few looks down her nearly non existent clothes in those places and that was it. She had been retrieved quickly. She had loved this Fisto bloke but he, Fisto, had put an end to that. Foolish of him really. This Order of theirs couldn't offer any reward to match Aayla.

He had hundreds, thousands, ten thousand or more? Any way, lots of wands in his trunk. From casualties, and areas they had cleaned after incursions. One of the first things they did was summon the wands and foci. Freaking demons were bad enough without help.

She stirred and the crystal slid to the bed, he switched the potion to her second stomach where it would be absorbed quicker.

She grumbled and scrunched her face up and reached out for him then crawled onto him. He lay there blushing, as hard as he had ever been. She woke up and sat up on him and looked surprised "You want to mate me?"

Harry laughed "With the exception of the lekku, ears, and being blue you are human in every way. Being blue isn't a big deal to me, and really works for you. The ears are cute and the lekku are much cooler than hair, at least on you. You are also very fit, very well built, gifted by the Force even, and you are a wonderfully intelligent person. Besides which, you smell so good! I haven't taken a vow of celibacy. I am full grown and it's spelled M A N. Of course I want to mate you. Stumps and rocks probably want to mate you. That doesn't mean I will. Or that I am going to turn into a rapist or something. I like to think I have control of little Harry not I am his ride."

Aayla leaned down, kissed him and giggled when he throbbed under her. She hopped up and headed for the bath. He rolled his eyes glad it was conjured water. Aayla meditated lightly under the shower to get herself back under control. She hadn't been like this since she was just past first blood. She would be walking around wet all day if she kept thinking about this. "I am in control of you too." She leaned over and told her vagina. Little Aayla pouted.

At breakfast what finally penetrated opened her eyes wide in surprise "I smell good?" Harry blushed furiously.

"I have no idea why. Sorry, but you do smell fantastic."

A support charm, exercise and another far afield plant gathering trip and just as they were about to leave a bull Rancor strode from the trees and roared. Harry looked at Aayla "What are the chances of two different deadly magical creatures in two days?"

Aayla shook her head "On this world those two are nearly the only animal life. Well, large animal life. Also they are imported, or were sometime in the past, by someone."

"So how much does it upset the eco system if I take this one?" Harry asked.

Ayla shrugged "They are not native. The farmers would probably thank you. We are close to one of the trading centers."

Harry nodded. He had already collected some nysillum cuttings, whole plants and seeds as well, it showed definite promise for some potions. "I'll just stand here. If he leaves us alone we will leave him alone."

Aayla's eyes widened "They have been known to kill Jedi."

Harry shrugged "Tier six size, Maybe a four. I got this. Apparate away if it gets too dangerous."

Aayla glared at the back of his head. He ignored it and took several things from various pockets. One of them being a M107. He got it ready and dropped to the ground taking a prone position and chambering a round. The Rancor charged and roared and Harry shot it in the back of the roof of its mouth. The Mk211 round exploded surprising him. Normally they would over penetrate and explode behind a soft target. The Rancor dropped and skidded a few yards closer to them and they heard crashing in the woods around them retreating in the distance.

Aayla blinked "What the frack was that?"

Harry shrugged "What kills demons." He put everything away, got out his roll of knives and trunk of flask and boxes, and went to work. Aayla looked a bit squeamish. He smiled "You can go back."

Aayla shook her head "The others might come back. Hurry though, the smell will attract acklay."

They got back and took a break for a shower, then lunch, then moved to the frigate. Harry snapped his fingers and got out a pair of white compression shorts and a white crop top from one of his trunks. Aayla frowned and put them on by dropping her clothes where she stood. Harry had turned and was digging in the trunk again looking for cross training shoes and handed them to her then turned away blushing. Aayla went to the bath and looked in the mirror and smiled. She walked back out "So one of the wives?"

"An unused set in case some troop needed them actually. That's the PT uniform of the forces I was in charge of. They have permanent cooling runes stitched into them. I can make more. I have the material. Then I just transfigure it and fix it with runes so it can't be ended with a charm. Cooling runes because, well erh." Harry blushed and stopped talking.

Aayla laughed "Females sweat too?"

Harry nodded vigorously and she drug him outside. He set up a bench and one of the droids brought him hull plates in order after he carved the runes on the ribs and activated them. He carved the runes, Activated them and the droids reinstalled the plates. Soon they were just bringing him plates with the runes carved in them. He smiled when him activating them worked. He got the Protocol droid to thank them and activated the runes on the hull plates as he worked on a set of what appeared to be dimension lumber made of metal but was really scrap molded into those shapes with magic. The protocol droid watched what he was doing, then got him to make extra pieces and stack them. Occasionally he was fetched by a droid to activate a rune set on some part of the ship in accordance with Aalya's plan.

Aayla meanwhile stripped systems and replaced or reworked them to be more efficient and give true redundancy. She had two of the astromechs working with her. She also replaced some things with better newer systems from the other vessels they had stolen. The Jedi fighters and two hyperspace capable Lartys, troop and cargo lighters that went from ships in orbit to the ground or functioned as assault lift for troops and general transport in atmosphere. "So that will make people unsure of what this is?" Harry asked.

Aayla nodded "It will appear as if it was one sold for salvage and upgraded with salvage parts. These cooling runes will make the systems function much better and confuse sensors as to what they really are. Processing speeds are up an order of magnitude. Remember we are testing your fuel creation runes today so don't wear yourself out. I started the walker heading to where we want it first thing this morning."

Harry nodded "We learned about electronics and heat on earth. Computers, or at least ours, locked up when they got hot. That's where that rune set comes from. It won't get so cold it freezes them and it won't get so hot as to let them lock up. Or at least that's the way it worked for us. Its dumping heat to the nearest, coldest, body it can find. It can't dump it to space. I don't think anyway."

Aayla nodded "There are ice planets everywhere, plus ice in the asteroid belts of most systems."

Way after dark the droids were left to keep working and they went to rest. The reactor from the AT TE running merrily away at full output tied to the rudimentary planetary grid some hundred twenty klicks in the distance, half way to one of the water works. It had been a big day.

SSDV

Darth Sidious had a big day too. A fifth of his Jedi hunter killer teams had stopped reporting. One of their ships had detonated in orbit of a planet taking another fifty teams and a thousand clones with it and Corellia had refused imperial citizens access to the surface, brought their defenses up and Garm Bar Iblis was fighting fleet actions against the Imperial fleet with the Corellian navy and winning! He had taken half the sector!

Bail Organa had left Coruscant headed for Alderaan, no doubt to foment more rebellion, and Skywalker had another week in Bacta before he would be able to be deployed. Meanwhile he was scraping him a force together. He could launch Skywalker and send the forces behind him.

The Antarian Rangers had revolted, and started killing clones in droves all over the core, as had the other paramilitary associated with the bastard Jedi, while they fought their way off those planets. At least a hundred Jedi and an unknown number of Rangers and other paramilitary were here on Coruscant fighting a guerilla war.

The revolt was gaining worlds by the hour and he was losing them. His anti non-base human propaganda had yet to stem the flow, or bring him reports of Jedi or Rangers.

On top of that, the damn Jedi temple was inviolable. Even a strike from orbit had been deflected into his Naval HQ nearly obliterating the building. Nobody was believing it was an accident either.

He had to get control of this. It was such a shambles it was becoming obvious even with him in control of the media. Nominally, those damn slicers were still cracking holo feeds and twining illegal signals on them.

SSDV

Yoda was getting a bit desperate. The deaths of Jedi had slowed to a trickle. Less than during the clone war even. But still he couldn't get these off this rock and Mace Windu was missing. Now Padme Amidala had died in childbirth for no apparent reason. "Take the boy and go to Tatooine you will Obi Wan. Leave him with his relatives you will. The girl Depa will take to Breha Organa on Alderaan." The two masters left and Yoda dropped into meditation. The Force was suddenly so different. Wild, chaotic, as in his youth. More powerful than the last two hundred years as well. Gaining strength every day as well.

SSDV

Aayla woke up and smiled. He was sleeping but he had given her a pain potion when the crystal fell off and today they would speak German to solidify it in her mind or at least she would, He might. Or French, Ryl, Huttesse. English. One of them. She crawled astride of him and smiled as he hardened under her heat. Until her vulva engorged and flowered around him. She leapt up and trotted to the shower as he woke. She smirked at the growl. Apparently, her body needed some more meditation. It wanted to mate him as well. She blushed and sighed.

Breakfast had them up and moving, and exercise was followed by an unremarkable potions ingredients apparition trip where she practiced side along apparition. She was pleased to find this particular Force manipulation was much better when she was in control of it.

The protocol droid had had the astromechs' carve the runes on the metal boards in the sequence and locations Harry had carved them as they sat in the rack charging and it ferried the parts. Harry had told all the droids thank you and he was proud of them. Aayla had never seen droids work as hard as they did after that. She was amazed and they finished nearly half of the work on the ship.

They worked the heat of the day away under the overhead cover, inside rune driven cooling, insect repelling and humidity reducing wards or charms. The humidity reducing ones were filling the water and reaction mass tanks on the frigate. At dinner Aayla asked "Harry what is in the oil you massage me with? It is powerful in the Force."

Harry smiled "Phoenix tears. A legendary magical bird from my home world."

Aayla frowned "And you don't worry about running out of them?"

Harry grinned mischievously "Want to see some magic?"

Aayla glared then softened "Yes I enjoy the way you manipulate the Force." Her traitorous brain added 'especially on my breast'.

Harry stood up and disappeared while a magnificent white bird hovered in his place. It sang a beautiful uplifting song and Aayla came out of her stunned, open mouthed, freeze. She looked in the bird's green eyes "Harry? How are you doing this?" She had gotten up and come around the table to the chair he was currently perched on and reached out to him whereupon he rubbed his head on her palm. She smiled brightly. It was as if he was made of the Force! Harry got petted and showed her where to scratch and she laughed at his actions. Finally, he changed back and she hugged him tackling him to the floor. "You can't tell anyone Aayla. It could save us someday."

Aayla nodded at him "So your tears help healing. What else can you do?"

Harry smiled "I can transport myself, and really extreme amounts of cargo, through wards. Any wards. And up to a hundred tons dead weight."

Aayla who was now sitting astride him as he leaned back on his hands nodded. "Yes that needs to stay secret even after we teach people to do wards. If we do."

Harry nodded and relaxed "I think we need to teach magic. First they have to find their cores, then begin to master occlumency, and Aura suppression though. After that if they take oaths, well if I can get one crafted, we can show them everything."

Aayla grinned at him as he rose to hardness under her "And find you a mate."

She blinked at his not nearly quiet enough "Found one." As she got up. She was a bit flustered but stripped for her massage and then did his, still nude. They went to bed and though both their minds were full they were asleep nearly instantly.

SSDV

They got into a bit of a rhythm for a couple of days. Aayla waking him riding him. Breakfast, exercise, work on the frigate, while studying and talking, a spar with sabers and magic and then the evening talking and studying while dinner was made and eaten, then massages, some time for their own things, and bed.

Finally they were done with the majority of the work on the frigate. Aayla watched Harry collect his own tears as a phoenix and then when he changed back, took him to the bed, arranged him how she liked him and snuggled in. She was not giving up her own personal sleep heater.

SSDV

The next morning Aayla took her now customary ride and hopped off as he awoke and then scolded herself in the shower. She had lay on him watching him breath and gotten wet. The hygiene charm she flicked on him probably woke him up faster.

They were just finishing exercising when Harry froze "Magicals. One very powerful one not as powerful but still growing maybe." He pointed and Aayla followed his finger and then felt of her neck. She had left her stone off! She turned her saber to maximum intensity but did not ignite it and stood waiting. Harry nodded and loosened his wands in their holsters. Aayla had his holly wand in a holster. It worked for her best of all the ones he had collected. He had the death stick, and a wand he wasn't sure what it was made of, but it made almost everyone else ill to handle it. He had no problems with it and it was probably better than the holly wand. It certainly loved combat. He thought he found it down around the Gallipoli incursion. It had come to him in a block of clay and sand. It was old, must have been a family wand. "I'll do ranged, you defend, then do close in. I'll keep them off you if they have guns and keep them separated. One at a time." He had emptied a blaster cartridge with it set to stun shooting at her and her deflecting bolts. Some back at him. He had been amazed and ceded close in combat to her until he could learn that.

"That's a good plan. Let us see who is visiting first." Aayla replied tightly.

The ship, looking much like a UFO to Harry landed, and even more UFO like, or at least in a good Hollywood representation of one, a ramp opened and steam obscured the people descending it until they finally broke through the billowing clouds.

He jerked as Aayla yelled "Master Ti!" and charged the two women. He recognized her from the holo but she wasn't blue, she was red. He looked at the younger woman and blinked at her red eyes. She had red skin too though. Oh and horns. A row or crown of them. He sighed debating whether to wait or walk over. He decided to walk. Aayla was talking five thousand words a minute in basic and he knew what would happen now. At least for a while. He was introduced to Master Shaak Ti and Padawan Maris Brood. Maris looked at him and arched a brow. He smiled and shrugged and between them they steered the older women to the cave, after getting some blood for the wards, and Aayla treating the fidelius like a prank, they then got the same treatment from her over the tent. Maris went out and back three times. Shaak Ti simply arched a brow. Harry started cooking, Maris came and helped.

Harry listened as events in the new Empire were explained and Shaak Ti mentioned another Droid fleet in orbit. Doing nothing but station keeping. The two senior Jedi discussed the new rebellion and Aayla looked at Harry. "We have to get off this planet and get to Alderaan. We have friends there."

Harry nodded "Two days' work on the ship. We can carry the other one."

Shaak TI looked up from the padd she was using to look over Aayla's plans. "Much less if we help and all the droids work. We have an astromech droid with us as well. The protocol droid can do diagnostics. Or at least help the ship do them."

Harry nodded and went to his trunk getting out tops, shorts and shoes. He left them on the table and walked in the bedroom coming back when Aayla called. She smiled and stood by the flap spreading her arms from her sides and Harry rolled his eyes and charmed her again. Shaak stepped up and with an expressionless face got in the same position. Harry arched a brow at Aayla who waved at him and smiled when Shaak's legendary composure broke and she moaned.

Maris stepped up blushing a neon scarlet and moaned when she was charmed as well. The other two women drug her through the flap and Harry followed chuckling.

By nightfall Harry had the last hull plates engraved and activated. He had already activated the runes on the frames, and did the systems wherever the droids carved them. He thought the little buggers had gotten carried away, until he looked at their calculations. Apparently astrogation lent itself to arithmancy, and the astromechs enjoyed it, and argued about it endlessly between themselves, at the speed of thought. It was a very tight, very solid array based on some simple runes. Harry got the protocol droid to give the astromechs the arithmetic descriptions of runes. That was pretty esoteric, but if they got it they could then do anything. He couldn't wait to see what they came up with.

The Jedi had the systems installed and the droids were testing them. Jedi were mechanics, who knew. He had already found out Aayla's favorite cover was as a ships engineer or a naval architect, erh, for starships. Spatial architect? No that couldn't be right. She was good at it too. The Jedi, with Harry following, went to the other ship and while Harry glared at the collars and chains they went to the cockpit to use the sensors on the frigate. When they came out Shaak and Maris possessions were in two bottomless packs, the ship was sparkling like a new penny and the slave chains were gone, the bulkhead bright and freshly painted with no evidence of the welding that had fixed the chains there. Aayla smiled brightly at Harry and hugged him, and Shaak arched a brow. They powered down the ship and went down the ramp where Shaak caused it to lift and seal, Harry shrunk the freighter to the size of a Frisbee, picked it up, and handed it to the stunned silent Shaak Ti.

Maris, wide eyed, led her along behind the other two while carrying the packs. Harry went and cooked again with Maris following and helping, when she wasn't looking at him in awe and making him blush. Shaak and Aayla were having a quiet but vigorous conversation. Harry jollied Maris out of her awe, and flirted enough to have her rolling her eyes.

They packed up after dinner and after checking the status of the system test, and Shaak eyeballing Harry's addition to the fuel system, On paper and then Aayla taking her to see the AT TE reactor still running full throttle with no fuel tank. They moved onto the ship which Harry had waved "Marauder" onto after no one objected to him naming it.

Harry meanwhile installed some of the the doors he and the droids had built of all that 'lumber' in a cargo hold with a security door and awed Maris again creating null spaces or because the doors opened onto null spaces from the size of a padawan cell to the size of small cities, depending on how the strange symbols were manipulated. One in the floor opened onto an enormous tank of polluted water for reaction mass. "Those droids were trying to pollute the water on this planet. I set the runes to summon it, and we can use it." Harry shrugged.

Maris followed Harry, helping as she could, as he packed up and tore down the wards and moved everything onto the frigate. Aayla and Shaak returned from the Clone base and some other sites, and Harry sighed at Shaak's appraising look.

Harry sat in the second level of the cockpit theater type seating as they lifted out. He looked out the front glass, transparisteel, awed at the massive droid fleet in orbit. The Jedi set course and went to hyperspace as he was still turning it over in his mind, while they were all still observing him.

Aayla finally asked "Harry?"

Harry looked up "Why did he leave that fleet here and add to it. I mean you didn't say anything about their being that many ships in orbit when you got the rings."

Aayla nodded "Because there weren't."

Maris answered "Skywalker 'killed the leaders of the CIS' at least that's what the holonews reports from the Empire say. They also said he shut down the droids but was nearly killed in the process on Mustafar."

Shaak Ti nodded "The Emperor has declared the Clone war over."

Harry nodded "So he knows somehow something happened on Felucia. Somehow this Skywalker was supposed to give him control of that fleet to add to his existing."

Maris snorted "Estimates in the Rebellion world's holonews are you and Aayla destroyed forty percent of his fleet and army. Aayla, really before she was killed. No one knows about you. That forty percent is a conservative estimate. Reports vary anywhere from sixty to eighty percent. No one knows how big the home fleet in the core was, or is. It will become more clear in time."

Aayla blinked "Me? I barely booby trapped the ones here. Wait I'm dead? Well, they think I am dead?"

Shaak TI nodded then asked "So those plans for sabotage and delay timing weren't meant to cut the hyperspace lanes at the Core boundary?"

Aayla shook her head "No, they were, but that was more punishment for Barriss and their mutiny. I didn't intend the other Jedi to do that."

Maris grinned "Well you paid them back all right."

Harry frowned "Which makes it worse not better. He really needs the, Droid?" The Jedi all nodded and Harry continued "Droid fleet now. I'm missing something." He lit up "The first thing I am missing is people tracking magicals." He dipped in his pouch and produced two stones and put them on Shack Ti and Maris and waved at all three of the women. "There. Now you can't be tracked. Don't take those off before we get a chance to teach you to suppress your aura. Well, first to find your cores. Then occlumency which will lead to suppressing your aura."

That started a barrage of questions as they worked their way through lesser used hyperspace lanes toward Alderaan. They found out as they tried to plot a course on a major route it was blocked with the remains of the former Republic fleet from Felucia.

That barrage lit off demonstrations of magic by Harry and Aayla and instruction in finding their core and occlumency for Shaak Ti and Maris. With half a dozen astromech and a protocol droid plus the Frigates battle command AI and self-repair capability they mostly sat in the cockpit monitoring what was going on with the ship watching Harry study and answering or asking questions. Alternatively, they watched Harry work on the doors he had built which led to giant spaces they put all the stuff they had collected in including one in which he set up the mass driver. He took the doors left after that, put them in a cabin, and stuck them to the wall providing more spaces, he then warded the cabin against mundane.

For the mass driver he built connected portals, one on the muzzle of the mass driver and one on the ship outside, held in a set of arms that pivoted for elevation and azimuth, running in a track he made from scrap, after he finally got a model the astromechs approved of. Really two tracks, one longitudinally and one along the latitude. They crossed on the bottom and top of the ship. The astromechs affixed the tracks, portal device, portal, and calibrated the whole system while they were travelling. Harry wasn't satisfied as it took fifteen seconds to get from one side of the stern around to the other as the track didn't cross in front of the engines but Maris had rolled her eyes and told him the ship could roll to bring the muzzle to bear. Harry frowned and nodded still not happy. They calibrated it, or test fired it, rather at their first hyperspace lane turning for which they had to drop from hyperspace and recalculate their course. A short side trip and a dead abandoned moon that would take a few years to get back together after being cracked and they were on their way again. Harry and the astromechs were very proud of their toy. The Jedi smiled indulgently. Harry and the droids sitting around scheming was cute, him talking and them whistling and beeping at him like they actually understood each other. Of course it also meant you never knew what changes would be made but usually it was an improvement. A bit scary, like the fully rune augmented, twelve hundred round a minute cyclic rate, mass driver, but an improvement. Besides that pancake machine. That thing was a hazard before caf. Pancakes flying through the air and landing on plates. Thing was a menace.

Harry was again amazed at how fast Jedi took instruction. Especially in magic. The Force. He had not been near so quick on the uptake. They were all using wands they somewhat, or more than somewhat matched, from his supply of them. Maris had a wand that was in love with her and hostile to everyone else.

Maris finally burst out when Harry and Aayla went to bed the second night on the ship "Master Ti! Master Secura is sleeping with him!"

Shaak looked at her "The celibacy part of the vows is conjecture. The prohibition is against attachment. Also, I do not believe there is a Jedi Order anymore. Lastly, they are not mated yet as you know. Your Force calls to him as much as mine does. I can't believe we have not known about Force cores all these years. The shroud must be to blame. How has someone not stumbled on this by doing the accidental Force manipulation he described children doing otherwise?

We shall find out if there is still an Order on Alderaan and then we will each have to decide based on what the High Council does."

Maris frowned thoughtfully and settled back in monitoring the ship and the holonews feeds. She was also working on her occlumency at the same time. Master Ti might decide she needed more exercise if she pushed it. Masters seemed to fall back on exhausting exercise a lot when padawans asked troubling questions.

SSDV

Harry was working with Maris one morning when a thought occurred to him and he trolled back through the history he had gathered from all these women. They had been taught magic, the Force, at a very young age. They were constantly enhancing their physical abilities with magic. They used very little of it directly. Like the recommendations from the US he had seen for training magical children early.

He considered the other unlikely similarities, the language having the same form for sentence structure as English and number of letters plus a few for combined letter sounds like umlaut's in German.

Maris watched him zone out then snapped her fingers when she had let him have a minute or two "All right Master?"

Harry grinned "I'm not your master, though…."

Maris smiled "all in good time."

Harry fell over laughing. Maris tried a pout. He laughed harder and so she leapt up and grabbed her sabers. He stopped laughing and held his hands up palm out. "So what's the deal with red sabers."

Maris explained Sith normally use synthetic crystals made the fastest way possible and they are a bit weaker and prone to breakage but could be quite strong in some cases. "With Jedi it's more about the journey to find the crystal and to get to the point where you are ready for that."

Harry frowned "So that's why you all don't use the sabers Shaak took from the inquisitor people?"

Maris shrugged "Can't you feel it? They just feel wrong."

Harry scratched his head. "Never picked one up really."

Maris huffed at him "No you haven't, have you Mr. five kilo beating stick."

Harry chuckled "Bokken. Suburito technically, It's weighted to make training harder."

Maris nodded, understanding the concept. "Now, more magic, lazy Master."

"Hey I'm not lazy!"

SSDV

Harry was sitting in the cockpit later turning things over in his mind again. The similarities, the droid army all of it. It was all running together a bit. He went to meditate or really order his memories.

When he returned later Aayla looked at Shaak Ti "Skywalker?"

Shaak nodded "I told you I saw him there. The 501st as well."

Harry looked at the holofeed Maris waved to and saw the logo of one of the rebel worlds news services. There was video apparently from the Temple security cameras of Skywalker's attack and what happened to it and him. Harry winced. He had seen lightning like that before. It was a high-quality video feed "Hey he has red eyes like you Maris!"

Maris glared at him "They used to be blue, that's the mark of a Sith. Red or yellow when they started out a different color."

Harry smiled "Sorry. So if you go all dark you are going to have blue eyes?"

He waved and Maris blinked. She looked in a shiny surface "Hey change those back!" It developed into a bit of a lecture and Harry going to get a training aid, a set of eyes that would register and record charms and curses. Once the women got over being creeped out, the things did spin around like Mad Eye's had, they practiced until Maris changed her own eyes back and then tried to change Harry's. It turned into a bit of a duel and Harry and Maris got pushed or chased from the cockpit before they broke something.

Aayla shook her head "Children, the both of them."

Shaak sat up "Does he have the school books he learned from still?"

Aayla nodded "I suppose. He has thousands of books. The protocol droid is translating them. About one every four hours. The ones on the top are pretty esoteric and deeply theoretical. Dangerous Harry says. They are what he has been using when he and the droids are plotting and scheming."

"We should inventory that trunk."

Aayla laughed "Harry says we would need an empty planet and repulsars to do it. Hermione was apparently a bibliophile. She made them all copies of every book she could find and the trunks to keep them in. He says her learning to break the copy write charms was one of the few truly practical uses he ever saw her make of runes. That and her curse building on and then warding the trunks. Apparently she is a genius level intellect."

Shaak nodded "That will be fun." Aayla looked at her and got a shrug "The Force wants me with him. So much so that if the Order can't be made to see sense I will be leaving." Aayla gasped and Shaak nodded "I know but the way we were going nearly got us all killed. He will never quit trying to get home, we will meet his wives if we live long enough. No matter the front he puts up he is a genius level intellect too. He will get back if it can be done."

Harry and Maris came back both puffing a bit and smiling. Shaak picked up where they had left off "So Skywalker attacks the temple as Order 66 goes out, but Windu has led a force against the Senate. Inside the Senators end up in the Senate chamber and Palpatine declares himself emperor. The Senate laughs and suddenly Palatine clearly orders the guards to quell the rebels, the guards start killing Senators on live holo feeds. The Jedi fight back. While the off-world feeds are riveted on the Jedi fighting the Red Guard and those new Senate guards. Windu leads the assault on the Chancellors office. The Jedi are beaten back with unknown losses, most of the Senate flees and those Red Guards plus the new ones are decimated. This pretty much sealed the rebellion when it was streamed live.

Meanwhile, instead of turning the 501st to attack either the Jedi or the guards, Skywalker keeps working on the temple and losing clones. Eventually he got in, I don't know how, and we had already evacuated everyone but guardians by then, then the temple or its defenses did what you saw earlier. We scattered and I took the slavers ship on the first stop of the commercial transport I had gotten. I had intended to go to Felucia directly, but with what you and the other Jedi did to the hyperspace lanes, I took a longer route, along the way the Force told me to drop out of hyperspace. I felt Maris and her master fighting and got there as quick as I could. Her master was killed. I killed three of their attackers and we killed the last one together, really Maris did, but she says I distracted him.

We joined her Master with the force and came to find you."

Harry frowned and Aayla told him "If our bodies don't join with the Force at the time of our death it is traditional for Jedi bodies to be burned."

Harry nodded "Dark Lords. Only makes sense. Spare your friends from fighting your animated corpse."

The women looked at him and he sighed "Inferni we call them. Necromancy, a very dark art almost none of the practitioners of which has lived to a peaceful death or a ripe old age." The women gaped at him. He shrugged. "Still not as bad as demons."

Shaak Ti looked at him "Speaking of which?"

Harry sighed and went and got the pensieve then spent the rest of the day pulling memories they wanted to watch. Well working on his padd while they watched a memory talked and then asked for one related to something they had seen. Some he had to drop to his mind palace to find. They were alerted to them from things said in passing by someone in the memories. When they were all looking at him a bit wide eyed he snorted "Past is past. We only live in one direction."

Maris grinned "Very Yoda like Master."

"Grrrr."

Aayla cleared her throat "Before you play more children. What happened to Skywalker?"

Maris nodded "I found some more while you were getting beaten up with magic this morning Master Secura. Apparently, somehow, Master Kenobi ran into him on Mustafar, after he had sent the deactivation code, in the fight to gain that code and send it all of the troops he had with him were killed by the remaining non droid units of the CIS army and navy taking them out as well. Kenobi apparently sliced him up good and left him dying. There was a short statement from Kenobi on Alderaan's holonews."

Harry nodded his head "Confirming those things should have tried to kill us. Not that robots would have been able to find us. Or can they sense the Force?"

Aayla shook her head "No they can't. Read radiant energy in the tachyon range is about as close as they can get, and then not very much and not very well."

Harry blinked "Tachyon range?" School was in session for Harry.