Chapter 17 – The Auction

Harry Potter, The Jedi That Would Not Die

Chapter 17 – The Auction

The following day the auction was being held in a large arena off from the slave pens. It had a sunken floor surrounded on three sides by rising levels of seating going up at least five stories, allowing all the rows of potential buyers to see into the ten meter wide pit on the floor which had a particle shielded door at one end of it that led back to the slave pens.

For the auction itself Harry and one of the rangers had been tasked with watching their slaves in the pens and ferrying them to the arena and back for their turn on the floor, Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan were sitting in the arena to watch the auctions themselves, they were hoping they would be able to identify as many of the sellers and buyers as possible, in case the information the other masters had acquired did not contain a list of all the names, but given the fact that there seemed to be dozens of buyers and sellers and hundreds of slaves it would be very difficult to keep track of them all.

The auction for the most part was going well, most of the slaves had been sold and Qui-Gon and Obi-Wan had been able to identify a large number of the buyers and sellers, at this rate they might not even need the tracking beacons.

All was going well until about three quarters of the way through the auction, at the time Harry was standing in front of the cells occupied by several of their volunteers when a huge explosion rocked the building.

"What on Earth!" he shouted as screams, shouts and the sounds of weapons fire emanated from the arena.

#Harry, Harry, can you hear me?# came Obi-Wan's laboured voice from his hidden comlink a few seconds later.

"I hear you Obi-Wan, what's going on?" he replied, all the slaves around him either looking around in panic or leaning as close to him as possible so as to hear what was going on.

#Death Watch are here#

"What!" he shouted in shock to the instant chattering of the slaves. "What on Earth have they got to do with this? Mandalore is on the other side of the galaxy, it's a bit far to go for a raid?"

#You remember the Taung Mandalorians that were in the slave pens?#

"Yes."

#Well apparently the Death Watch rather idolise them and their former war like ways and even though the species is nearly extinct and they no longer have a war like culture the way they used to, they still hold them in great regard and did not take kindly to any being taken captive, at least according to Vizsla who had just blasted his way through the wall and announced the reasons for them being here before they started shooting.#

"Great, what now?"

#Well it's utter chaos over here, at least a dozen Death Watch have stormed in through the hole in the wall that they just created and as Death Watch are not stupid it would not surprise me if the hanger doors were blocked as well. We were forced out of the arena when everyone in here ran for it, I'm currently ducked into an alcove in the wall letting the torrent of panicked people out while I let all of our team know what is going on. Master Qui-Gon has announced our presence by drawing your lightsaber and protecting the chained slaves in the arena while one of the rangers tries to free them.#

"How did Death Watch react?"

#Well after the initial shock of seeing a Jedi here they started talking politely, that was the last I heard as I was forced out of the room. I can hear blaster fire but not from the arena so I imagine they are still talking, but knowing how much Death Watch despise Jedi I don't imagine that will continue for long.#

"What's the plan then?"

#Get as many slaves out as you can, especially our own, we know a few of the buyers were coming down to take their slaves with them when they fled so try to stop them.#

"What if the new 'owners' get in the way?"

# My Master guessed you'd ask and said 'do what is necessary to protect the slaves' so don't go out of your way not to kill them just because some of them are unarmed. Sometimes you can be too noble Harry. Once you have freed as many as you can then make sure that we have enough transports to take us back to the ship. I'm heading back your way to borrow one of your blades then we are to try and get all the slaves away from here, I have contacted the ship so they know what is happening and they are preparing to take off as we speak. My Master is going to distract Death Watch for as long as possible in case they take an exception to us as well as the slavers, it we are lucky he will be able to convince them to work with us on this, they probably won't care for the non-Mandalorian slaves but if we are lucky they won't stop us freeing the rest either.#

"Understood," nodded Harry before dropping his comlink and drawing both his shoto lightsabers from his arm compartment much to the surprise of the slaves around him who had been listening to the conversation eagerly.

"Step back from the front of the cages," he shouted before running to one end of the row and charging back along their length whilst expertly swinging his blades in continuous figures of eight so that each time be passed a cage he sliced through the locks.

"Show off," called one of the volunteers as they emerged from the cage with a grin.

"Get them all to one of the transports," ordered Harry releasing her bonds and handing her the vibroblade he had been carrying during this mission, they would have to free the rests bonds later. "I will be sending more your way so make sure you have plenty of room for extras."

"Yes sir," replied the volunteer before directing the other slaves towards the exits.

Harry repeated the procedure on the next three rows, releasing several hundred slaves who became the start of an almost unstoppable torrent heading for the exit. Several guards and buyers tried to get in their way but most ended up getting knocked out by joint efforts of several slaves or if they were unlucky they simply got run down and trampled by the crowd, Harry didn't have to touch one of them.

When he got to the seventh row however things changed as he encountered his first real hurdle. Three Death Watch were opening the cages and re-chaining the non-human slaves together so that they could lead them off.

"Oh no you don't," he shouted, though he doubted he could be heard over the torrent of cries from the slaves, some crying out to be freed, others cheering as they legged it and more screaming as they encountered various hurdles. But while they might not have heard his warning the soldiers definitely saw him coming, or at least they did after the first one fired on him and he redirected the blasterbolt back at its sender, killing him instantly as it expertly landed at his neck between the joints of his armour.

The next two were ready for him, causing them to exchange fire for several seconds before he was able to get close when he, learning from his passed lessons with Mandalorian iron, took their heads off at their unprotected necks.

He paused for a second to look at the three dead enemies, he still hated killing but he had come to accept over the last couple of years that it was necessary. Quickly coming back to himself he released the re-chained slaves and directed them towards the exit.

"Obi-Wan, are you reading me?"

#I hear you Harry.#

"The Death Watch are not just freeing their kin, they are trying to capture the non-humans for themselves."

#That makes things more difficult, I'll let Master Qui-Gon know.#

Harry carried on several rows and kept on freeing prisoners until he reached the two rows he wanted to get too the most, the first was where his Master had been kept but to his alarm when he reached that row of cells he found them all empty and they were not lightsaber cuts on the doors, they looked like the cells that the Death Watch were breaking into. They had been clever and had gone for the most valuable slaves first.

He tried to reach her down the link but could not hear her, which meant she was unconscious, but importantly alive, he would know if she were not. He moved on quickly to the row where Alema was kept, her cell was also empty. His mind started to reel as he realised he had probably just broken his promise to free her and his promise to do his best to his Master, he should have come straight to these cages first. He had lost them both, he could only prey that Alema had been given a locator beacon so that he could track them both.

His thoughts were interrupted as he heard feet running towards him and turned to see Obi-Wan heading his way. He did not have time to think about Alema or his Master now; the other slaves needed their help. Turning off one of his lightsabers he threw it to him as he started running at a slower speed towards the exit, allow the other padawan to catch up with him.

"I ran into a couple of the rangers on my way here, they tell me that they have checked the extremes of the warehouse and have freed the slaves back there, there are no more still locked up, they are all lose. I've also contacted the ship and is on its way, as are a couple of other ships the crew managed to rent quickly."

"They had better be big ships; I doubt there will be enough for all those people."

"I thought of that," smiled Obi-Wan, holding up a pad. "I appropriated this from one of the data terminals, it's a list of all the ships including ours that bought slaves to the auction, we can 'appropriate' some of those if we need to."

"Qui-Gon's not going to like that."

"As you have often said to me, it's the lesser of two evils."

"Have you see Aayla?" he asked changing the subject as they ran.

"No, she's probably either with the rest of the escaping slaves or..."

"No, she's unconscious, she must have been taken either by her new Master or by the Death Watch."

"We will find her Harry," he spoke louder than before, as the sounds of a shouting crowd got louder.

"Don't worry Obi; I know she will be ok. I was just hoping that one of our guys had got her instead of one of theirs."

They came to a dead stop as they came to the back of the ten meter wide tunnel that led to the parking area for the land transports, all hundred meters of it was completely blocked with frantic slaves.

"I hate it when I am right, Death Watch must have shut the doors," realised Obi-Wan. "How are we going to get passed them?"

"We can only Force push them out of the way but we will likely crush some of them to death in the process...But," he said slowly, "I do have an idea."

"I recognise that look," Obi-Wan said slowly as he backed away.

He watched as Harry stepped back and took a run up before seeming to jump at the ceiling, he only realised what he was doing when Harry's metal arm hit the ceiling with a flat palm and stuck leaving him hanging from his palm. He had forgotten about the electromagnet in Harry's hand.

Harry swung backwards and forwards a few times before managing to swing himself towards a large ventilation pipe that travelled the length of the corridor, the warehouse was so far underground he was not surprised it needed a ventilation system. Swinging himself onto it he began scrambling his way along it in the gap barely big enough for him to crawl down between the upper surface of the pipe and the ceiling, definitely not the most sophisticated way of getting to the front but at least it worked.

It took him a few minutes to get to the end of the corridor. When he got there he swung his way off of the pipe and activated the lightsaber. One thing guaranteed to get people's attention was the sound of a lightsaber. It worked as all those at the front looked up and stopped shouting in time to see a young Jedi leap from the pipe, impale his lightsaber up to the hilt in the corridor wide doors and slowly start to descend as the lightsaber cut through the metal. There was a nice space for him as he touched down as the slaves backed away from him.

"Don't worry, I am here to help you get out," he informed them as he started to cut the other three sides to the door he was about to create. As soon as he was through and he had Force Pushed the block of metal out of the hole he scampered through quickly before stopping those that tried to get through after him with a Force Push, lest they crush each other in an effort to squeeze through the person sized hole.

"Wait, I will open the door," he ordered as he ran over to the control panel and released the locks allowing the flood through.

Looking around the hanger he could see that the outside doors were open, the hanger had about ten large hover transports, he believed called land barges, each could hold a few dozen people as well as about two dozen smaller speeders, which started disappearing almost immediately as slaves scrambled to get out.

Harry inwardly cursed the Death Watch, if things had gone the way they planned them to they would have captured all the slavers then could have slowly let all the slaves that had not already been taken out and they would have helped each other along, but the panic created by the Death Watch attack had turned what should have been a nice relieved and cooperative crowd into a routing mob.

He watched as several slaves scrambled onto a speeder and forcibly kicked and punched others that tried to get in off before speeding out of the hanger, running a couple of other slaves that decided just to run for it down in the process. They would all kill each other at this rate if he did not stop them.

Drawing his wand he pointed it at his throat and chanted the 'speech' charm as he had come to know it and leapt on top of one of the barges.

"SILENCE!" he bellowed, his shouting combined with the spell made his voice deafening, stopping almost every living being in the room who then all turned to stare at the lightsaber wielding teen. "Now listen! Myself and my colleagues are here to rescue you, now our plan did not quite go as expected when the Death Watch arrived but if you all continue to panic like this you will make things worse and you will likely get re-captured. We have ships on the way to help get you all of world and back to your home planets now please remain calm and follow my instructions."

He paused for a second, the few people who had been moving had stopped and were looking at him expectantly.

"This is what we are going to do! I want anyone who can pilot one of these barges to go to the controls of one! DO NOT start them! DO NOT go anywhere or you will be answering to me! Then those that will fit will get on board them! I want those of you that arrived on the planet with me in the speeders! Leave a seat in that one free as I will need to go with you back to Mos Eisley! Any spare seats in speeders can be taken up by anyone who does not mind fighting and especially those that have flight experience as we will need to appropriate a ship or ten! Those that do not get on the speeders or the barges, wait with that Jedi there!" he said gesturing to Obi-Wan who had wound his way through the less densely packed crowd to the front. "Follow his orders! He will get you on the ships that are coming for you! DO NOT panic! DO NOT run! We are going to have enough trouble gathering those that are already half way across the dessert as it is! Both those of you that go with me now and those that wait here are ALL going to get of this planet, just be patient! Thank you!"

As he jumped down and cancelled the spell people started moving, though at a much slower speed this time, there was of course some pushing and shoving but nowhere near as much. Going up to Obi-Wan he took the pad showing the locations of the slavers ships from him.

"I've been studying the amount of people here and the amount that can fit into those barges. You can take about five hundred with you that leaves around the same here."

"I didn't realise there were so many slaves?"

"Neither did I until I saw the slave manifest. I think you were right, I don't think there is going to be enough ships on their way here to take the rest, you may need to bring some ships back here. Thankfully Mos Eisley does not really have anything in the way of security so other than the ships crews you should have little resistance to...appropriating them."

"Understood," Harry nodded taking the list. Obi-Wan had highlighted several ships. "Three GR-75 transports, two GR-45 transports, four more Barloz class medium freighters and three YT-2400 light freighters. Oh you really know how to pick you ships Obi, couldn't you have picked something that could actually move, I know speeders older than me that can go faster than some of these ships."

"Sorry, but it is a bit difficult transporting hundreds of slaves in one man fighters, it tends to cause fights and breathing problems. Bulk carrier ships and freighters are the slavers transport of choice it seems, anything faster will be too small. That's all there is and if you are not quick some of them might have gone by the time you get there, you're going to have enough trouble flying the ships with such small crews anyway."

"You do know that all those ships together are only just going to be enough to carry the five hundred coming with me, there's barely going to be any room for those left here."

"Use that brain that Hermione always claims you have Harry," Obi-Wan sighed. "We are not giving each person their own quarters, ignore what the ship spec says, we just want them able to sit down in any spare space we can get them into until we can get back to a friendly planet, probably Naboo, then we can let them off and get proper transport for them. We will only be in hyperspace a few hours anyway so we won't even really have to worry about the air consumption or supplies."

"Oh yeah," Harry replied, not quite believing that he had been so dim. "Right, let's get going," he shouted to the others speeders as he jumped into the passenger seat beside one of the rangers as their speeder started moving and led the procession out of the hanger back towards Mos Eisley. As the left he heard the sound of weapons fire off to his left.

On that side of the compound he could see the large hole in what he guessed was the arena. From this distance he could see Master Qui-Gon swinging his lightsaber around and striking at blaster armed slavers, there was no sign of the Death Watch, they presumably had already left. Harry was not concerned, the slavers only had blasters, they would be no match for Qui-Gon, even using an unfamiliar blade. He turned back to the front and activated his comlink and broadcast to the surrounding craft.

"Can the pilots of the barges please put this on speaker please I want everyone to hear it." He paused for a few seconds to give them time to follow his instructions before continuing. "Now this is what's going to happen, the speeders and I are going into Mos Eisley while the barges stay outside the spaceport as they will draw to much attention. What I do want is anyone who thinks they can be of assistance in a fight or has any experience in flying a ship who is on those barges to proceed to the back of those ships, when we get close the barges will stop and we will fit as many of you as possible onto the speeders anywhere we can, we will need as much help as possible with the ships. Hopefully each should only be guarded by a couple of crew so it should be easy but we won't take the chance. Those on the speeders and I will capture the ships and bring them back to the barges where the rest of you will all get on, we will then rendezvous with the rest of our ships either in orbit or if they need more ships to carry the rest of you guys we will go back briefly and collect the rest before departing."

They continued in almost silence for the next few minutes, when Mos Eisley came into view they stopped the barges and transferred the men and woman who wanted to fight, there were so many they had to turn some away. Harry had been slightly foolish when he thought that seventeen speeders ranging from top of the line models to the cheapest things that money could buy, all travelling in convoy and all full to overflowing with passengers, most of whom were either male Twi'leks dressed only on their lower halves or female Twi'leks dressed extremely scantily, would go unnoticed even in a spaceport like Mos Eisley, but luckily for them there was no real law enforcement on the planet other than the Hutts and they had checked on the way in that none of them were in residence.

Harry quickly assigned the various ships to various speeder crews who rapidly went about their appointed tasks as the hangers were scattered throughout the spaceport, Harry and his crew of five were going for one of the YT-2400 freighters. They were not exactly small ships at over twenty meters long and about twice as wide but they were tough and sturdy, just what you wanted in a freighter. All seemed to be going well for Harry's team, they got right to the docking bay without encountering any guards, they didn't even encounter a locked door, then they realised why.

"Oh great, no ship," he groaned leaning his back against the wall. He had stupidly left the list of ships in the speeder, and as the speeder was not locked down he knew for certain that it would be gone by now, anything in Mos Eisley that wasn't chained down did.

"Obi-Wan."

#I read you Harry.#

"Can you remember what other ships near docking bay 254 were on the list?"

#You have the list#

"Had the list, I left it in our speeder and-"

#And being Mos Eisley it isn't your speeder anymore, right err...Bay 253 rings a bell as a possible ship, it's relatively close to you but I can't remember what it was though. We will need you back here with the ships though, we have about two hundred people shipless at the moment.#

"Thanks Obi," he replied before leading his little party around to that docking bay. As they made their way through the doors he was greeted by a wreck. "Obi-Wan, I am going to kill you."

Before him was the most battered YT-1300 he had ever seen.

"I supposed we don't really have any choice sir," one to the Twi'leks with him pointed out, causing Harry to sigh in agreement before making their way towards the ship. There appeared to be no one protecting it, but whoever owned it seemed to think that simply closing the ramp by remote would keep anyone out. Using his Jedi powers he Force Pulled the doors open, making them hit the floor with a clunk allowing the group onto the ship. As the others charged in Harry took a side glance at the ships name plate.

"The Wayward Son, odd name," before continuing onto the ship and heading for the cockpit, what stupid idiot designs a cockpit off to the side of the ship rather than at the front, on top or in the middle.

"Get the power systems online," he instructed those with him. "Someone fix the ramp I just forced, the locks should just need setting to the open position then it should close as normal."

"Yes sir," came two replies.

The ship took a good fifteen minutes to be ready to take off, it really was a heap of junk, but actually moved quite well for such a badly designed and maintained ship, it seemed like the engines had been improved somewhat and it was easily able to outpace the other YT series ships with them, even the newer models. They signalled all the other parties and found that only a few of them had had any problems and those that were ready before them were waiting out by the barges. The convoy of twelve ships moved back as one towards the auction house where several others ships were waiting for them including the ship they had arrived in and a pair of consular ships. When they landed their ships in the surrounding dessert, Harry left his ship and met up with the other two Jedi who after congratulating him and each other, gave him an update on what had been going on.

They had had a signal come through from Mater Koon stating that there were at least fifty location beacons active, the largest proportion of which appeared to be coming from the hyperspace junctions that led towards the Mandalorian Sector, including the beacon that his Master had been fitted with. Qui-Gon told them that they would take the ships to Naboo immediately with Harry and Obi-Wan each captaining one of the larger GR-75 transports while he commanded the small armada from the freighter they had come in. Harry though did not like this plan, he had been getting this growing bad feeling ever since he had seen that the Death Watch were gone that his Master and Alema needed him NOW.

"Master Qui-Gon, what about my Master and the other slaves taken by Death Watch?"

"Do not worry Harry, master Koon's strike force has split up and is rescuing all the slaves as we speak, those heading for the Mandalorian System will just take a little longer to get to because of Mandalore's remoteness to Tatooine, they are rescuing the closest slaves first, but do not fear Aayla will be fine."

"Master, I don't think they can wait, my Master needs me now and I know the girl Alema is with her."

"They will be fine Harry," he stated again, causing Harry to look down for a second before turning back to the Master.

"Master, you always say that you follow the Living Force more strongly than most of the other Jedi and that it's something that you encourage. Well right now it's telling me to go after my Master and I'm afraid it cannot wait."

Qui-Gon studied him for a moment, seemingly looking into him to see if he could see what he was feeling before nodding his consent. "Alright Harry, but I want you to ask the rangers if they will go with you. We don't want a repeat of the last time you met Death Watch, your Master would not be happy with me if you lost any more limbs, there should be enough people with flight skills amongst the slaves to pilot the rest of the ships."

"Yes Master," he nodded, smiling in relief, before taking his lightsaber back and running to their ship to retrieve the rest of his attire and gear. The rangers were only too happy to help him and were already on board the Wayward Son ready and waiting for him when he boarded.

The fleet of ships travelled as one into space, ignoring the angry signals from Mos Eisley Ground Control before Harry's small freighter took off towards Mandalore.

AUTHOR'S ESSAY: Now who knows enough about Star Wars history to tell me what the name of the ship the Wayward Son is about 60 years after this?

I must say I was a bit overwhelmed by the response I got to the last chapter, deciding what relationship this story will involve really stirred things up, instead of the usual half dozen reviews over the course of a week I got 20 reviews and messages in the course of a couple of nights and 33 in total since I published the chapter. It seems that there were quite a lot of Harry/Hermione fans among you after all they were just all keeping quiet. In the last chapters reviews and messages along I got several for Aayla, several for Hermione, a couple for both and a few for neither or other characters, I think you guys are going out of your way to make this difficult for me.

I don't know if any of you suspected that the Death Watch would turn up, I left some slight hints with the mention of the Taung Mandalorians but I suppose they were VERY light hints so probably did not suggest anything really that could have been worked out.

As for Voldemort, do not worry, not much longer to wait now, I have already planned a story arc (or chapter depending on how long it is when I write it) to deal with that, I just have to decide when to introduce it into the story.

I think the general consensus amongst you is that a Twi'lek and a human can reproduce though it may require a little medical/magical/Force help.

Several of you have been asking about Alema, I won't say much about her yet, but I will tell you this. I understand that there is a Twi'lek named Alema in SW EU somewhere, I did not name her for this character, I simply looked up common Twi'lek names and found one that I liked, so there is no connection there. She will continue to be a part of the story at least for a little while but she won't be a love interest for Harry and she is probably only going to be a secondary character, she is mainly there for a small plot segment I wish to put in the story as a conclusion to the slaver arc that you will see in the coming chapters.

sekmarcspan, no I have not read any of robst's works, but I am not going to risk looking up his work yet as if it gets me hooked it might stop me writing this story and then the rest of the readers may want to kill you, but thank you for the suggestion, I may come back to it the next time I am looking for something to read.

X Pyro X, thank you for saying so, it's always great to be appreciated and the quality of my writing is one thing I worry about.

Thank you as well Drakkainen, I have had thoughts along the same lines.

rpgaff2, I wouldn't be up to writing two versions of the same story, I would find it far too confusion and would end up writing bits for the wrong pairing in the wrong story plus I would always feel like I was adapting one story to fit the other plot and that is a sure sign that it's not going to be good writing if you are forcing the story to fit a different plot.

bujian, valid point about the Arithmancy and Ancient Runes, I ran through Harry's subject list in my head, I forgot to think about Hermione's, might have to include these later.

Angeldoctor, Hermione is going to get her own story arc after this one and talking about negotiations is not far from the mark, though I don't yet know how that arc will end, we shall see as I write it.

OlorinTheMaiar, or should I call you Gandalf, nice idea with Luminara, especially as their ages are so close, but I am getting enough people messaging me arguing reasons for HP/AS, HP/HG, HP/AS/HG, HP/Leia and HP/PA as it is without adding another one into the mix.

This is to everyone, if I do not reply to your messages or your reviews that does not mean I do not read them, far from it, I read EVERY single one of them and I appreciate them all so thank you.

I am sorry if my posts are further apart now but I have had a couple of REALLY bad and busy weeks at work and when I did get a chance to write it was not on new chapters, it was in improving the chapters I already had so from my point of view I did not get much done. Hopefully the busy period will drop off in the coming weeks so I will be able to write more but I make no promises especially as this particular arc is requiring me to put much more emotion and consideration into the story as it's a dark arc and very emotionally tiring for the characters making it harder to write.