Chapter Sixty One

Having returned quickly to Sorenno, Harry and Aayla heard about what had happened, but there was little they could do about it from so distant a position, and they had their own training to concentrate on. This wasn't all lightsaber training for the two padawans, of course. Master Fay helped teach Aayla several healing techniques that she had already taught Harry, Harry's own attempt at teaching them having fallen somewhat flat since he still had quite a bit of trouble with them himself. They continued to learn about galactic politics from Count Dooku, and they learned more about Force Stealth and criminal investigations from Ayla's master, Quinlan. Master Unduli, after giving Knight Vosa a clean bill of mental and physical help, had left Sorenno.

However, Quinlan was often busy helping Knight Vosa in her investigation into the pirate scourge afflicting the D'Astan Sectorand two of its neighboring sectors, Daedalus and Glythe. Quinlan did much of the legwork, heading to the various planets whose shipping was suffering under the pirate attacks and turning any data he discovered over to Komari to go over. She then compared it to data already in the Jedi Order's hands, as well as what Republic Intelligence, a very limited, highly politicized agency, had discovered or not discovered.

He also gathered data directly from local investigators, because most of the planets weren't actually talking to one another. The sectors didn't talk to one another at times. Even planets in the same sector didn't talk on the judicial or investigative level. They left that kind of thing to either the Republic as a whole (who, as Harry put it, obviously weren't doing it so well), or the Bounty Hunters' Guild if a specific criminal escaped from one planetary jurisdiction to another. But as a Jedi, Quinlan could talk to all of them one after another, gathering information and passing it on to Komari to correlate.

Normally as his padawan Aayla would've gone with Quinlan on those missions, but the two of them had decided to leave her with Harry and Master Dooku. Master Dooku's instruction in both galactic politics and lightsaber training was a step above Quinlan's own, and it was not the first time that they had separated from one another short amounts of time.

So generally speaking, the two padawans fell into the same sort of routine that they had before their trip to Coruscant. Master Dooku's days, however, were somewhat different after his talk with Master Windu. He began to organize and then oversee the construction of a much larger training area, the actual construction being carried out by teams of droids and workers. He also ordered lots of different training tools and talked extensively with Lily about teaching and organizing classes.

On top of their daily training, Harry and Aayla used their limited spare time to begin to get a handle on their relationship. The two of them each had a small threadbare room to themselves, separated by a bathroom that they shared. Lily, however, had given them a lecture on going too fast that left both their ears ringing, so for the most part the bathroom was simply a thing rather than a rendezvous point for their relationship.

However, the bathroom did lead to the bit of discord between them, however minor.

Sighing and groaning, Aayla rolled out of bed, not quite awake yet. Last night Master Dooku had decided to wake up the two padawans three times to work on their reaction times in an ambush environment. It hadn't been the first time she'd dealt with such training, but Dooku had already worked the two of them to the bone during the day, which made it harder to deal with than when her own master had done it.

Grumbling, she reached out for Harry through their mental link, finding him up and getting dressed. This meant the bathroom was clear, which was good considering she needed to use the bathroom. Walking in, Aayla dropped her pants, closing her eyes as another massive yawn came to her before sitting down, her eyes still closed as she sat down on the toilet. A feeling of cold ceramic touching her thighs and rear woke her up abruptly, and she hissed, but finished her business before standing up grimly, pulling her pants up and banging the door into Harry's room open. "Harry Potter!"

Twisting away from where he had been using a technique to clean his clothes, Harry gulped, trying to guess what had irritated Aayla, but getting no clue through their link. "Er, yes, Aayla my love?" he asked, being especially sweet in the hopes of heading whatever this was off while sending feelings of concern and love through their link.

Going by the flush that came to Aayla's cheeks it worked somewhat, but she still poked him in the sternum with a hard finger, emphasizing her words. "Remember…to…put…the…toilet…seat…up!"

Another, far more pleasant moment occurred the first time that they exchanged massages.

The girls had often done this back on the Explorer, and Harry was interested to learn. Aayla went first. With Harry laying down on his stomach, she sat on his legs, leaning forward, her lekku dangling to either side of him as she worked on his back after a long day of training. Her nimble fingers sought out knots and eased them out, first along his lower back, then higher up. She then worked on his shoulders and neck, her fingers cool on Harry's bare neck, the first skin on skin contact of the massage.

In return Aayla shivered, feeling an echo of what Harry was feeling as he leaned back in her grip, letting out a little groan of pleasure under her touch and turning his head to the side. "Force, Aayla, that feels good…"

"I know, Harry. I can sort of feel it too." Aayla bit her lip lightly as she began to put more pressure into her massage, working out the kinks in Harry's shoulders harder than before. This caused the echo of the feeling to affect her even more, and her lekku twitched.

This caught Harry's attention, and his hand reached slightly back, his fingers lightly running up and down the tip of the lekku. Aayla gasped, actually humping her hips against the back of Harry's legs as she gasped. "Oooh, that felt good! Why the heck? I remember some of the other girls touching my lekku, and they never felt that good before…"

Aayla tried to concentrate through the sudden haze of pleasure enough to bring what she knew about her race's biology to mind, finally getting it after a moment. While normally serving as enhanced memory receptors and no more sensitive than an arm or leg, lekku could become much more so during sexual contact when the body was flooded with her people's equivalent of estrogen or testosterone. The sensitivity varied from individual to individual, as did the amount of endorphins needed.

"Mph, and the connection between us is definitely heightening the effect," Harry mused, his fingers still working over her lekku. This was causing both of them to react, Aayla far more so, of course, but Harry was feeling both the echo from Aayla and Aayla's continued work on his shoulders, back, and neck. Her massage had turned from almost clinical to definitely sensual by this point.

Realizing what was going on and knowing via their bond they weren't quite ready to go that far, Harry let his hand fall from her lekku, and Aayla began to regain control of herself. Laughing, she leaned down, kissing Harry's neck right below the hairline. "Thanks, Harry, but let's leave that kind of thing for later, hmm?"

Turning around underneath her, Harry gently pulled Aayla into a close-mouthed kiss, before switching positions with her as he sent through their link, "you're up, love."

Aayla giggled and lay down next to Harry as he moved to kneel on the bed beside her, stretching like a feline in place as she waited for Harry to begin. A sudden feeling of challenge, desire, and a wish to tease hit her through the link and she tried to roll away only for Harry to place his hands palm open on her back. "Now, let's see if you can keep that attitude, Aayla…"

But eventually the rest of the universe had to intrude into Master Dooku's mansion. On the same day Padme discovered that several thousand of her people had been sold into slavery rather than killed, Quinlan and Komari's investigation ended, and Quinlan returned to Sorenno.

Aayla looked up from her lightsaber instruction with Master Dooku, stepping back and turning off her lightsaber. Dooku paused, then turned toward the young Jedi Knight making his way across the grounds of his mansion's garden. "We will talk about why it is never a good idea to assume combat will end like that later. I would have thought better of you, Padawan Secura. Greetings, Knight Vos. You have returned successfully?"

"We think so. I actually returned this morning, but Komari and I have been going over the information ever since. We think we know what is going on now," the younger man replied.

Something about the way her master said Komari's name made Aayla's metaphorical ears twitch as he came across the lawn towards where she and Master Dooku had been sparring. To one side Master Dooku had Harry working on his footwork on uneven terrain while combating attacks from multiple angles. To do this the Jedi Master had created a series of five hundred small rocks with equally small repulsor emitters on their bases.

Harry too had stopped, and he bowed to Quinlan as the knight addressed Dooku. "We will have a presentation prepared for the Council of Counts this evening, if you could call a session for us, Master Dooku?"

"Now you have me interested, young Vos," Dooku mused, nodding his head. "I will do so."

Then he looked back at Harry. "Did I tell you to stop?" he asked mildly. With the touch of a button on a remote control in his hand, Dooku caused the rocks underneath Harry to shake, rise, and twitch this way and that. "Excuse me a moment," Dooku said to Quinlan, before turning back to Harry, shouting instructions. "Reach out with the Force! Determine where the ground will be and place your feet in such a way that your feet are simply there. Do not allow the ground to dictate your movements, and do not try to use your limited physical perception to guide your movements. The Force can help you dictate the flow of the battle under the control of your mind."

"Ye, YEEEES, Master!" Harry shouted, his words nearly rising into a shout as the two stones he had been standing on suddenly flew in two different directions pulling his legs apart. Still, thanks to his ever-increasing training in Force Precognition, he was able to push off of one, then use the other to leap to a third.

Pulling off his Jedi robes, Quinlan tossed them to one side, activating his lightsaber. "Would you mind if I took over my padawan's training, Master Dooku? I need to work off some energy."

Dooku nodded, and moved over to watch Harry as Lily and Fay came out of the mansion, having been working on a project of their own.

"Work off some energy?" Aayla quipped, bringing up her twin lightsabers in a cross guard. "Is there any specific reason for that, Master?" she asked teasingly, watching for a reaction. Both her empathy and her feminine instincts were telling her something here…

Quinlan didn't rise to the bait, however, merely cocking an expressive eyebrow at her. "Are you just going to stand there all day, or are you going to actually attack, padawan?"

Her lips twitching, Aayla sighed and did so, and the training continued throughout the day.

That evening the Counts' Council met once more, gathered in their council room with their heirs and some Sorenno Security Fleet personnel who were involved in enlarging the starship fighter program. That project hadn't gone forward very far yet, but they had gathered a large cadre of dedicated starfighters from their existing fleet both to create the first few starfighter divisions and to create a cadre of trainers for further enlargement. Moreover the designers were already hard at work on a locally designed starfighter.

When everyone was seated, including the counts and their heirs/advisors, Komari and Quinlan moved around the table, nodding at them all. "Ladies and gentle beings, I am Jedi Knight Quinlan Vos, and this is Jedi Knight Komari Vosa. The two of us were placed in charge of an ongoing investigation into the pirate crisis infesting this sector and its neighbors, which included an attack on Sorenno itself a while back."

"We know that," count Luther grumped. "I've lost two more ships since our last discussion, or rather one of them had been lost before that, and only now has the report gotten back to me. But anyway, get to the point."

"I will do so, Count Luther," said Quinlan calmly. "I would first, however, like to make certain that credit goes where it is due. Once I ascertained their trustworthiness I was able to work with a few investigators on each planet. A few of them had already looked into much of what the two of us put together. They just didn't have enough of the pieces to see the whole jigsaw puzzle.

"What we have here is a very large if diffuse operation being run from multiple angles, but we think only one mind."

"Organized crime?" one of the other counts interrupted. "Black Sun returned in full force, then?"

"No, this operation isn't as subtle as they were, nor is it as large. I have dealt with Black Sun fragments and before that the Black Sun itself," Quinlan answered assertively, shaking his head, setting his lank, black hair to sway. "This operation has some of the earmarks of their work and is probably being run by another fragment, but we don't have enough information to point to a specific person or individual just yet."

After that Komari took up the tale. At her direction a holographic screen lit up from the table, growing in size until everyone in the room could see it.

As she did, Vos sent a nod to Dooku, who in turn nodded slightly to Fay. The two of them and the two padawans began to use the Force to search out any jumps in concern or fear in those around them, which they would continue to do throughout the discussion. In this manner they would be on the lookout for spies, since they already knew the opponents, whoever they were, had to have contacts in the systems they raided, including Sorenno.

"The first clue that something much larger than we had thought was going on, with, as Knight Vos said, multiple parts, was that ships without insurance from this system and its neighbors came under attack, while the ships with insurance purchased there, while attacked, were protected by either the defense forces of the sector, being with them already in convoy, or appearing suddenly to save them," Komari began, highlighting the systems involved on the galactic map. "So we looked for connections between the various insurance companies on those planets and came up with several of them. All of them are owned by private individuals whose pasts are completely blank. We can assume, therefore, that they are dummy companies."

"Protection rackets, really? How droll," Dooku murmured even as he leaned back thoughtfully in his chair.

"Yes, but it goes further than that, much further. Privateers from that sector do indeed protect the ships in that sector, but after a suggestion from Knight Vos some of the investigators on the planets they use as bases pulled their flight logs. When they were out on patrols unseen by any, they could have been involved in these attacks…"

At her command the map changed once more, highlighting several of the attacks in purple for a moment. Then the image changed to various lists of names, one name on one side followed by dozens of others next to it. "These attacks were always the most violent, leaving no survivors who could identify them."

"Which would include my people," Luther growled, leaning his head forward. "So we really are dealing with a rogue sector fleet? A fleet answering to someone above and beyond their own leaders?"

"Calling it a sector fleet is a bit of a misnomer," Quinlan said cautiously, taking over the screen for a moment. Six cruisers the size of a Consular class popped up, followed by an even dozen converted freighters and a single squad of mixed UGLY and CloakShape starfighters. Then the ships' images changed, becoming whatever everyone could guess were patrol routes. Several of them overlapped each purple dot.

"They aren't that powerful a group, a sector flotilla or squadron would be a better description. But…yes. The evidence against them is particularly damning. This shows the flight plans of the ships and how they could intersect the locations of the various attacks.

"However, these attacks have also served to cover something else. The violence of them, leaving no survivors like that, covered the fact that in other attacks other pirates took prisoners. That is the second aspect of this pirate campaign, a massive slave taking operation," Quinlan finished bluntly.

"What?" said one the counts, sitting up abruptly as did the others in the room save Aayla, whose eyes narrowed dangerously. "Surely someone would have noticed people were disappearing."

"Here we run into the first evidence that someone in the Holonet Relay System is on the take," Komari said heavily. "Reports were sent from the star systems where these attacks came from to the sector capitals, which sent them all off to Coruscant. But many of the initial reports have disappeared somewhere in the HRS relay, and what few reports have been sent on to Coruscant are simply gone."

Looking on as the map changed once more, Dooku slowly nodded. "And because all these attacks occur on the edges of the sector, the sector governors would be leery of following up on them on their own, especially if they didn't understand the size of the problem…"

"Exactly, Master Dooku."

"How do we know the crews attacked were taken rather than killed?" asked one of the starfighter pilots.

"Unlike the wreckage left behind by the rouge privateers, there were a distinct lack of body parts and other remains in the wreckage of these attacks," Quinlan said, shaking his head. "I investigated several of the wrecks myself. There were no biological remains."

"The next bit of information was very much a needle in a haystack sort of thing. Only by combining the manifests of every ship did we get this clue." Once more Komari took up the tale, the image of the map disappearing into dozens, then hundreds of ship manifests. A moment later most of the manifests highlighted yellow, then a few lines on each highlighted red. They began to enlarge in turn, allowing each line to be read easily.

After the last line finished enlarging one of the starfighter pilots hissed, and Aayla's eyes narrowed once more. Sensing Harry's confusion she reached out through their bond to explain. "It's called a distributed energy emitter, Harry. It's one of the most important parts for starfighters. The part is also used on a lot of commercial vehicles, but combine it with the rest you see and they might be building or refurbishing starfighter or freighters."

"Bits of parts here, bits of parts there have disappeared from those ships and not been seen in the local black markets," Quinlan said, shaking his head. "I looked particularly closely, since these parts would have been very decent sources of money. Alone, none of these supplies are enough to raise concern, but put together they paint a bad picture."

That list was replaced by a blue one, most of the parts on it naming things Harry recognized. They could be part of putting together primitive weapons systems, and those are a lot of energy cells, and oh my word, enough gas magazines for a small army. Another list was more mundane, but the number of supplies on it was worrisome. Parts needed to create or maintain a space station or hazardous environment dome, and a lot of them too.

"What we have here is someone organizing a slaving ring on a scale that is without precedent to my knowledge, and which might or might not be building up a private army," Komari finished bluntly.

"So what are we going to do about it?" said one of the starfighter pilots, equally bluntly. "While we now know what's going on, that doesn't really give us many options to deal with the real source of this plot."

"We can try to discover who was blocking the reports from getting to the Senate," Quinlan said hesitantly. "But we would need Senate approval to pull the relay reports, which is just not going to happen soon, and probably not without our doing so getting back to whoever is involved. We're talking about trillions upon trillions worth of material and slaves, and racketeering money here."

"We could move against the privateers, that is, the defense force involved, couldn't we?" Harry asked from where he sat in the far back of the room. "If we lay the evidence of their wrongdoing in front of their political leaders, at least we can force the parent governments to disavow them, and then we can move against them physically with the backing of whatever other forces that the Daedalus sector has available."

"No. Doing so might warn them just like going after their spy in the relay. I'm afraid if we don't want the privateers, as you put it, to get away, we will have to act directly against them. And doing that will no doubt warn whatever group is organizing all this that we are on to them," Dooku replied.

The older man was staring at the galactic map so hard that Lily had the rather whimsical thought that he might be trying to burn it away with his mind. Of course, as a Jedi, he might be able to do that with training. "Agreed, if you act against any one part of this scheme, the mind guiding it will get away. We need some way to trace this back to the main base or whatever it is, staging ground, maybe?" Lily said aloud, her voice unheard by all but the Force sensitives.

Harry looked up at her, then pulled out a datapad, typing out a quick message. "Could we use a Point Me technique?" That Force technique allowed you to find things by pointing you in the direction it lay, like a compass. "If we used triangulation…"

"Harry, you know that technique only works on items that are on the same planet you are." It might actually have been more directly distance related than that, but the few times they had tested it in space it hadn't worked. "Besides, we don't know enough about whoever is behind this to really form the spell."

"We could use the parts they stole, right? Use the manifest to find the exact serial number. And I still say it's a power requirement, not an inherent limitation," Harry returned, typing quickly as he tried to keep a pout off his face.

Having listened to this, Fay smiled, leaning in and whispering in Harry's ear, causing him to flush and duck away slightly as Aayla giggled under her breath on his other side. "Forgive me, Harry, but I much prefer you awake and conscious rather than unconscious and Force exhausted. I tried that technique once, remember, and if I cannot form the technique through the background of the rest of the Force, you would have scant luck trying to brute force it through."

Watching his mother's ghost nod firmly and feeling Aayla's agreement, Harry dropped the subject. A second later he turned to Aayla as he felt a sudden spike of concentration through their link. "What is it?"

Aayla shook her head. "Just a second Harry… I think…"

The two padawans tuned back to the main conversation as most of the counts were nodding at something one of the starfighter commanders had said. "Now that's a not bad idea," said one of the other counts. "It will certainly cut down on the time necessary to arm our new starfighter corps. And if we send our pilots to Kuat where they can take personal charge of those Delta 6s and CloakShapes we purchased it gives us a force already moving and out of sight of whatever spies they might have here. But that still doesn't answer the main problem of where to point them," he continued, scowling. "We keep coming back to the point of not knowing where they are based."

"I think I might have an idea…" Aayla said aloud, and all eyes turned to the young Rutian Twi'lek. Any other young woman might have felt self-conscious at that, but Aayla was a Jedi padawan and wouldn't have even understood why she should.

Aayla had been looking at the list of things this pirate group had stolen and noticed something missing that, given the rest of what they had stolen, made little sense. "There is one important item that's missing here: food. I understand that that's not a big deal, but surely if this group was getting food from an agrarian planet we would have heard rumors or seen evidence about it by now. And that third list points to them working from a hostile environment, so it's really doubtful they could be growing their own."

"True, the prefabs and other things of that nature, and the air filters in particular, point to the base being on a gas planet or a moon with no atmosphere," Quinlan said with a nod of approval at his padawan.

"There was actually a report I read today from Nez Peron about several Nabooan transports showing up on the open market. Given the events on Naboo that grabbed my contact's attention," he went on thoughtfully, his eyes lighting up suddenly with eagerness. "And Naboo is known as a major exporter of foodstuffs. But if they're already selling the ships, those ships might have transported directly from the planet to the target we're seeking..."

Harry exchanged a glance with Aayla, then looked towards Master Dooku and the other Jedi. "Well, we do know someone we can get in touch with on that planet…"