Chapter Seventy Six

Over the next few weeks both groups of students began to learn with various degrees of enjoyment or reserved acceptance. During this time, Shaak, Giiett, and Alecto began their own training in runes.

As Master Fay and Lily had predicted, the runic arrays training created quite a few spectacular incidents of flashing lights and even one explosion to go with several shocked exclamations, despite the fact that they were keeping it as simple as possible at first. Master Dooku also dealt with recalcitrant students on a daily basis. His methodology of taking absolutely no grief from any of them, however, did not change, and several times over that week he simply challenged the entire group to a spar, thrashing them soundly.

Harry and Aayla's classes were easily the best in the academy in terms of how fast the students learned, and they also began to help the younglings start learning lightsaber skills. In Dooku's mind, teaching something like that would help Harry to further conceptualize his own style. It was also one of three skills that he wanted to see from Harry before agreeing to allow him to try to find his own lightsaber crystal.

Not that their classes were completely incident free.

At one point Harry looked up from where he was helping a few of the younglings as he felt their attention suddenly shift to something else. He watched a few of the apprentices and younglings turn and stare as Aayla began to perform a lightsaber stance, whipping her arm around this way and that to either side, then bringing it up right in front of her, poised and ready. Doing so made certain parts of her anatomy bounce, which given the fact that she was wearing her training clothing rather than a cloak, was on display at present. The sight was enough to cause everyone who was male and with a pulse in the area to think for a moment, Jedi training or no.

Aayla felt the stares, of course, along with the spike of emotions from all around her and was looking around irritably while Harry did his best not to laugh. Aayla scowled at him, and he waved her off gently, sending the message, "Yeah, Jedi aren't supposed to have hormones. Ha, ha, ha," actually saying the word 'ha' rather than laughing. That seemed to help Aayla get over it, however, as did the feel of Harry's own eyes on her, the appreciation and desire coming through their link, and the class continued.

But Aayla was not the only one grabbing attention. Despite the fact that the Clan Saa techniques were becoming more and more well known among the Jedi Order, Harry actually wasn't. He had been entirely insulated from the Order by Master Fay and her legend. But due to the ease with which he used the clan techniques and the fact he was the one teaching these classes, Harry had garnered a lot of interest from the get go. More than a few of the Masters had begun to put two and two together, but that was neither here nor there.

Where Aayla's body engendered a lot of interest from the untrained or still only partially trained padawans and younglings, the women among the knights and padawans were somewhat more complicated in how they responded to the opposite sex. Yes, Harry was handsome, and that was part of it, but the other part was his nurturing, kind manner. Having taken lessons from his mothers (and it was plural there, Aayla knew it) and Master Yoda, he had created his own teaching style which was encouraging, fun, and challenging, pushing the students to become better. Seeing him with the younglings and watching him ruffle their hair or pat heads made the women among the knights and padawans among the class, even the ones who stopped by to observe from Dooku's class, become very…thoughtful, their eyes trailing him as he moved around the room.

Aayla quickly realized what was going on. She had seen other girls react to Harry. Padme in particular coming to mind, but it was amusing nonetheless to see that even Jedi Knights and Masters were not immune to it. "Handsome, powerful, charismatic, good with kids," she said mentally that evening, as they prepared for their own lessons in the Force and meditation. "I am going to have to beat girls off you with a stick.

Harry blinked at her, then looked at the memory of what Aayla had seen earlier that day and groaned. "So, um, should I figure out a way to do make my body deformed or something? It's not like I want that kind of attention. Well, not from anyone else but you, Aayla."

"Not even Zule or Padme?" she asked, her mental avatar looking at his thoughtfully. At the moment they were in her mind, walking around looking at the memories from the day. Aayla had acted more like an observer today, so this gave Harry a better perspective on how the class had gone.

"…Not if they've got in the way of what we have now," Harry replied honestly after looking back at her silently, their emotions traveling between them without words.

Zule was fiery and aggressive, but also caring and warm once you got to know her. She was also Aayla's closest friend within the clan, and Harry had seen both the good and the bad from her during their time on the Explorer. While he couldn't say he knew the young woman Zule had become during her time at the Temple, Aayla did and had shared her memories of their times together, so that really didn't matter much.

Padme, in contrast, was calm, controlled, and desperately needed an outlet from her normal life as queen, time to simply be a girl. That need, as well as how fiercely intelligent she was, how certain she could be, and how friendly she was, called out to him, though her being two years younger than Harry did make him a little leery.

He couldn't deny that both were attractive in body and mind, but Harry would no sooner act on that then he would cut his own throat. His relationship with Aayla was far too important for that kind of thing. She was the center of his universe, right up there with his mothers in importance.

Tasting the truth of those thoughts, Aayla nearly gushed, her astral image conjuring a chair and pushing Harry into it before sitting down on Harry's astral image and kissing him ardently. "You are my rock, Harry Potter! It goes you, the Order, and the people within it. Those are my loyalties; those are my priorities. I love you, never doubt that."

"I love you, Aayla'secura," Harry said a little breathlessly, then he pulled Aayla's astral form into another kiss, and for a time the two of them were a little too busy to think deep thoughts. But this would not be the last time they had this conversation.

Of course, just because they were helping to teach the students did not mean that Aayla and Harry stopped their own training. Master Fay continued to train them in the mental arts every evening, though neither of them had as much inclination towards them as she did. Lily continued to teach Harry and Aayla how to use runes, with Giiett and Shaak Ti quickly catching up to them. The Togrutan Jedi Knight and the council member had blown through the starter lessons for the runic arrays quickly, despite a number of mishaps.

Master Dooku and Quinlan continued their lightsaber training, even pushing them both harder to make up for the lack of time per day. Dooku continued to teach them politics and even began to push them to actually interact with the Council of Counts once a week to see how politics were played on a daily basis. That this helped both of them build up a rapport with the local leaders was a secondary goal that all the other Jedi missed.

On top of these continuing lessons, piloting was added to their daily regimen. While Aayla and Harry had both had piloting lessons before, of course, those had all been on merchant vessels or Master Fay's yacht. Now they learned starfighter piloting and combat, and it was a whole different ballgame.

Despite that, Both Aayla and Harry proved to be excellent starfighter pilots, and were requested by the Serenno Starfighter Brigade to help them test their new starfighter design, the first version of which finished construction two months after the training center opened for its first class.

It was a little larger than most starfighters, with wings which first swept backwards than forwards and a central body like a slightly squashed diamond shape, much like a Sprite, with twin lasers jutting from the sides of the diamond very slightly. The wings had forward jutting blasters with a reinforced almost shield-like structure on the outer edge of the blaster, connecting and holding the two lasers. The wings also housed the two normal-space engines. The back of the main body of the starfighter contained the hyperspace engine and the fuel tank.

To either side, situated on the wings in the built up section connecting the wings to the main body, were two proton torpedo launchers. Between these two launchers, and slightly aftward so as to not be in danger of any backwash from their launch, was a place for an astromech droid.

As Harry and Aayla walked around it, the Nabooan native who had led the design team pointed out aspects of it, smiling happily at its design. The astromech droid, he explained, was a necessity for this starfighter to help in three areas. First, it saved space which would have been needed to house a computer capable of hyperspace jumps. This space was then used for its proton torpedoes. The second reason for the astromech unit was, of course, maintenance. This design had proven to be a maintenance heavy machine, which may or may not actually force the Serenno government to discontinue it.

"And the third reason?" Harry asked politely.

"Oh, there is a bit of a surprise. Several of the pilots who came back from working with you Jedi to get our people back were impressed by the trick that Master Vos pulled on the pirate dreadnought. The astromech units have been given a program to interact together like a dedicated network system. We call it the integrated targeting network. The droids will all automatically take targeting telemetry from one another when ordered, which will let squadrons of starfighters perform the same trick Master Vos did and even work in a defensive net to help take out incoming missiles or possibly other starfighters."

"How good are the shields on this?" Aayla asked, having hopped up to one of the wings and looked down at the shield emitter.

The man grimaced. "It…well, that aspect isn't as good as we could've hoped. They're…okay, but they're not up to say, those of the N-1 or the Sprites."

Hearing that Harry blanched, realizing that that was a very dangerous weakness. "What if you took the two blasters that are in the body of the starfighter here and replaced them with another generator back here?" he asked, looking at the body of the starfighter from underneath.

"Young man, I understand that you Jedi know quite a bit about this esoteric 'thing' called the Force, but trust me, we've been over this design quite thoroughly over the past few months. Besides, this is only the first of several designs were trying out," the man replied, sounding somewhat affronted before going on more normally. "And between you and I; I don't think it will be the one that will be accepted as the main starfighter for the SSG. We've learned a lot by making it though, which is all to the good."

"What do you call it then?" Harry asked, smiling at the other man's tone rather than taking offense.

"And how aerodynamic is it in atmosphere? It looks somewhat sleek, but I don't know; these side shield portions, they look as if they'd really be an issue with side to side maneuvering," Aayla interrupted, reaching down to push at one of them.

"They are," the man said, smiling at Aayla before turning to Harry. "It's not very aerodynamic at all in atmosphere, really, because of that and because of a few other things. As for the name, we call it the Falcon."

"I like the name, at least," Aayla replied, looking over at Harry. The two of them shared a moment's silent communication, and Harry nodded at her. Unlike Aayla, he had actually been involved in space combat before, and while sharing memories was a good way to learn, it was not as good as having the experience in the first place. "So, what do you want us to do?"

Eventually it turned out that this design really wasn't either cost-effective or very good despite its firepower. When the designer had said that the shields were not as powerful as the Nabooan starfighter, what he really meant was that they were almost nonexistent. They could stop one blast from a starfighter's weapon, but a second hit would short them out, and it was proven in a series of tests that despite the best efforts of the astromech droids, they simply could not be repaired without returning to dock. They also required quite a lot in the way of combat reflexes and skill to get the best out of them, being somewhat slow in turning but not reacting.

So that design was scrapped outside of five prototypes, each of them slightly different from eachother. All of them, however, shared the issue of the shields.

After that, Harry and Aayla continued to be called in occasionally, but with that first initial design seting them back so much, it looked as if it would be at least a few years before Serenno really had a good starfighter design to call its own, especially considering that several of the designers wanted to design not one starfighter type, but two.

One would be predominantly a star fighter, designed to take on other starfighters. The second would be what Lily, when she heard of it, called a bomber, a starfighter designed to take on capital ships. A combined arms unit like that would be able to handle anything it needed to and be able to do both of those jobs well rather than have a single starfighter that would only be okay at both.

No one involved in the project thought anything about handing over the five prototypes to the Jedi Order. And no one else in the training center, not even Dooku, realized that Lily and Harry had plans for those starfighters.

While Harry and Aayla continued their training, their teaching, and even more training, Master Dooku slowly withdrew from everything but retraining the other masters and Harry. At this point they had enough of a foundation to retrain themselves, and Master Giiett could take over some of the classes. Dooku was always available to teach when needed, but not at night.

At night Dooku no longer took part in their mental and force based training sessions. Instead, he began to use his own Force senses as hard and as often as he could to try and search for anything he could use to identify the Sith,

Dooku was convinced that the Sith was someone he had met in the past. Someone in his past who had subtly influenced his own interest in the Sith. But because of his own guilt over it, Dooku never went to anyone else for aid. He fasted; he meditated for hours upon hours every night rather than sleeping and began to organize his mind in what Fay called Occlumency, never hinting to the other master why he had to do so.

That, of course, would take him months, but Master Dooku was certain that it had to be done, and, just as fanatical, that he would not ask for aid in doing so. No one else at the school had a hint of his new interests.

And so the months passed until about five and a half months after the school had opened, Harry entered his master's room for an evening's study and meditation. Aayla wasn't walking with him for the moment, despite this being one of the few times the two of them could be alone together given their hectic schedules. Quinlan had returned from a mission which had taken him away for a few weeks, and the two of them were spending time together.

When he opened the door to Master Fay's room Harry stopped, looking confused at the tableau inside. On one side of the room Master Fay stood, practically glaring up at Lily. His mother's ghost was staring back at her just as hard. "…Should I come back later?" he asked hesitantly. "Or perhaps get one of the other masters to mediate?"

Both women broke off their stares at one another to look at him and noticeably calmed down. "That is not necessary, Harry," Master Fay said with a smile, gesturing him into the room. "We're not having a shouting argument or anything like that."

"No, no," Lily said with a laugh, sitting down next to Fay and her son, as much as a ghost could anyway, kissing him lightly on the cheek as the rest of her began to fall through the floor that he had sat down on. Grumbling, she righted herself, shaking her head. "We were having a most polite argument, it's true, but it's not a personal one, just a difference of opinion."

"That's good," Harry said with a chuckle. "I can't remember the last time you two argued at all, except maybe about that one runic array, the one that you tried to place on your clothing, Master?"

"Let's not bring that up," Fay said hastily, flushing in a manner Harry had rarely if ever seen before from her.

Lily had been proven correct on that one: cloth could not sustain the power of a runic array. In a moment of surprising stubbornness Master Fay had attempted the reinforcement array only to realize what exactly happened when a runic array overloaded the material it was etched, or in this case drawn, onto. It had been extremely embarrassing for her, and she thanked the Force that Harry had gone to bed a few hours before that, leaving only Lily to see. Her friend's laughter at her mistake still rang in Fay's pointed ears, but at the moment, the memory actually served to calm her down somewhat, and she chuckled, leaning forward to ruffle Harry's hair.

She paused a moment, chuckling again. "I just realized that soon I might have to reach up to do that, Harry."

Harry blushed in pleasure at that, catching her hand in his and kissing the back of it gently. "No matter how big I grow, you'll still be my Master," he said, his eyes shining at her and his mother. The way he said the word 'master' added bit more meaning to it, which both women smiled at, knowing that he really meant 'mother' there. "Now," he said, leaning back but still smiling brightly at them both. "What was this argument actually about?"

The two women looked at one another, and Fay gestured to Lily to start. "You know how we're coming up on the time where that one Lucrehulk will be turned over to the Jedi Order?"

Harry nodded. He knew that very well, he and Aayla having gone out of their way to talk to Padme at least once every month since they had come back to Serenno. He also knew that the various construction projects on Naboo were proceeding apace, and the alliance between Naboo, Serenno, and Kashyyyk was thriving at this point. Despite knowing that a Jedi shouldn't feel pride for his accomplishments in that manner, Harry was a little bit proud of that.

"I want to focus all of the efforts of you, me, and the other students learning runes on the ship as soon as it arrives. I've looked at the design with Master Fay, and there is a lot we could do with a ship of that size with such massive cargo capacity. You know how we're limited in how much you can expand an area. I want to create a defensive juggernaut," Lily said, looking over at Fay.

Fay nodded and began to input a few commands into the room's computer, and a small holographic generator popped up, showing the ship in question. "We could put one, maybe even two planetary sized shield generators in that ship!" Lily said expansively.

From there she began to list off a few arithmantic equations, gesturing at the holding areas of the ship. The image began to expand under Harry's direction now as he followed her words on how far they could expand its space using a runic expansion array. Harry was looking at the design thoughtfully, having had much the same idea, though he hadn't made the jump to planetary sized shield generators, and of course he had had no time over the past half a year to think about the project.

Size of the generator, power, and area covered were the three things that affected shield strength. The more generators, the greater redundancy in the shield. The more power, the greater the shield strength; and the smaller the area, the stronger the shield can be over its surface.

"Mind you, nothing we can do with runes will effect the outer hull of the ship, so we won't be able to do much to its personal offensive power. Although they could carry a lot more starfighters like those Vultures," Harry mused, staring at the design thoughtfully.

"Perhaps, but we are going to run into problems whatever we do," Fay cautioned. "Remember that while we can enlarge space, we cannot multiply what is there. I also disagree with the thrust of what the ship should be used for."

Harry nodded. That was something they had run into several times. Space expansion arrays expanded space and the things in the actual wall, but they did not then duplicate the things sticking out of the wall. An example would be that the array could extend the wiring set into the wall to a certain extent, but could not duplicate the lights set into those walls. And if the control runs were not continuous, if they had breaks, then you had to replace them too. Experimenting on Master Fay's yacht had, in a way, forced Lily and Master Fay to become somewhat expert electricians, with Harry right alongside them.

"Further, I am worried about the secret aspect, and am unwilling to turn all of our attention onto this project," Fay went on. "While I have no doubts about Shaak's ability to keep a secret, I would still prefer to keep her and the others well away from truly game changing-concepts, at least for a few more months. It is not their ability to keep a secret that I doubt, it is their understanding that they should keep it in the first place, even from other members of the Order."

"That's a very thin line, master," Harry said, smiling at her and shaking his head. "I understand your point, though.

Fay nodded. "Further, the project itself is too large and would be far too time-consuming. On top of that, there's no way we could run the ship as it is. We would have to robotize the ship to an even greater degree than before. And I do not trust computers or robots that far. Astromech units are fine, but a full robotic crew? There's a reason the Katana Fleet is regarded as one of the worst disasters in Republic history."

The Katana fleet had been an attempt to create a fleet that needed the barest minimum in the way of living crew, automating powerful, state of the art dreadnoughts to the point where they had cut the crew to a bare fifth of their original complement. They had even been slaved together, one ship to another, hence the tragedy: when the crew of the flagship had been infected by a virus which drove them mad, they all jumped randomly into hyperspace. No one had ever been able to find them again.

Of course it wasn't only that example that made Master Fay leery of robots. She didn't like the fact that the Trade Federation used robots to get out around the proscription against standing armies. She also didn't trust computer programming. It was one area where the Force could be little to no help, and computer espionage in particular had proven to be a weakness in the Jedi Order before, one they did not have a real defense against even now. On top of this, she didn't like the idea of even the Jedi having access to what would amount to an army in a can, as Lily put it.

"But then we wouldn't be able to use it for humanitarian reasons either, Master," Harry said thoughtfully. "But from what you're saying, regardless of the mission type we'd still have to keep the expansion charms themselves a secret?"

Fay leaned back, sighing faintly, and Harry looked at her in concern. Fay opened her eyes and looked at the two Potters, shaking her head. "The expansion charms are one of the most important things we have to keep secret," the elven Jedi said bluntly. "Every time I ask the Force to give me a vision of a future where we have allowed that knowledge to spread, the darkness suddenly closes in all the faster! I wish I could tell you why, but I don't know why."

"Oh, that's easy at least!" Lily said, scoffing. "If someone is behind the Veil of the Dark Side, he or she obviously has his fingers in a lot of pies. And possibly even a few eyes inside the Jedi Order itself."

"I wish I could gainsay that statement, but I can't," Master Fay shot back tartly, giving her head a convulsive shake. She sighed again, closing her eyes and raising her hand to rub at them for a moment, looking up as she felt Lily's ethereal touch on her shoulder, smiling wanly at her friend.

As a padawan, Harry was actually not allowed to know about the fears of the High Council on that score, however Fay had told him as much as she herself knew, which was precious little. She had even asked the Force for any hint as to his/her/their identity or whereabouts. Or even his/their overall goal. But what Harry didn't know was that the Force had been utterly silent on that matter, the Veil obscuring her eyesight so completely it was as if she had gone blind. That had been a severe shock to the ancient master, and Lily had been forced to talk her out of continuing to try to get answers from it.

"It is as if the Force does not care!" Fay had said at the time, almost in histrionics, utterly shocked at being so rejected for the first time since she was a youngling. "It feels almost like the Force itself is turning on me!"

"The Force, as I understand it, can't turn on an individual," Lily said, reaching out to actually push her fingers through her friend's face, something she very rarely did, but which served to jolt Fay a little, her eyes tracking again. "The Force is all about this 'balance' concept and the big things, keeping the stars all moving in their courses and such?"

"That is an egregiously simplified concept of what the Unifying Force is, but all right, I can understand what you're saying," Fay replied, sensate once more, at least.

"Then in that case the Force itself might be silent, or its voice might be unheard through the Veil that you've mentioned so often," Lily said briskly. "That doesn't mean that the Light Side of the Force has betrayed you. It might be weak now under the Veil, but it's still there and still obviously cares for individuals when the Force as a whole can't. The feeling between Harry and Aayla, the fact they can bring you into their bond, tells you that much. And what about your own future, Fay? Can you still see that?"

"In a way," Fay said, smiling now. "I know what I am doing at the moment is what I should be."

She breathed in, then reached out, initiating her own light kiss on the other woman's ethereal cheek, centering herself once more in the Force as she did so. "You're right Lily. That is enough."

Harry's voice brought both women back to the here and now, smiling faintly. "All right, how about this as a compromise. We start working on the ship in segments when it arrives, just me and Aayla. We can replace our starfighter training with working on the Lucrehulk. I agree that using the Lucrehulk ship as a humanitarian vessel is a massive boon, and it can be the public reason for why the Order is keeping hold of it; no one's going to question us about that.

"And isn't that ship going to be immediately turned around once it's full of parts for Naboo? We can load it with all those parts, drop some off, and then simply keep some of the extras hidden in one of the cargo bays. We can start with a single shield generator and a single cargo bay, then expand outwards from there. It'll be slow going, and we'll always have to be on the lookout for making certain that our work isn't noticed from the outside, come up with reasons why we're funneling material through one cargo bay into another or some such. But it should be doable.

"As for the need to further mechanize the ship, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. I am not exactly in favor of the idea either. Although I do like the idea of having an entire fleet packed into the ship."

"You would, my little Guardian," Master Fay said, her good humor now restored. "For now, however, I believe we have some meditation to get to," she said, clapping her hands.

The former Trade Federation ship arrived right on time a few weeks after that discussion, and Harry found that what minimal free time he and Aayla had to spend together practically disappeared. They got up with the sun, and they went to bed utterly exhausted every night. The only time they had was in the mornings; if they woke up early enough they could have a few moments to spend together tenderly hugging or kissing before joining the rest of the Jedi for breakfast.

Harry and Aayla were both happy, as were all the Jedi Masters, that the special powers of Clan Saa were spreading amongst this group quickly. By this point nearly every youngling and all of the older Jedi could produce a shield. Now they began working on holding it and using it in combat against both long range and hand-to-hand opponents. The stunner and color changing techniques too had become commonplace among the group of Jedi at the center.

More than a few of the masters who had been ordered to come to Serenno for retraining and lightsaber practice completely stopped trying to learn a new lightsaber style. They instead focused entirely on these new abilities. The Consulars felt that these and the other techniques Harry was teaching were much more in keeping with their personal combat styles. Dooku wasn't happy about that, but could not argue the point as well as he had when the classes began.

In contrast to those, and even element manipulation, however, teleportation proved to be a nonstarter for many of the Jedi. That technique took imagination, control, and power, being far more power intensive than any of Harry's other abilities except for conjuration and transfiguration. The only one outside of Harry's own extended family that could transfigure was Master Dooku. Even Shaak couldn't quite pull it off except in small items like needles. Though this actually didn't matter much considering she could also propel said needle so fast they could penetrate body armor like buckshot.

So all in all, despite being incredibly busy, chaotic at times, and pushing Harry and Aayla to a degree that even full Jedi found hard to keep up with, their lives on Serenno and within the training center proceeded very well for them. Others, however, were not nearly as happy at how things were going.