It took two full days for their target to appear from under whichever rock he had been hiding. During the time that Arden was watching the casino, Mercer was just getting ready to replace her, the com-link suddenly crackled.
"Found him," the witch reported over the connection that the former Imperial had assured them would be scrambled to high heaven. "What should I do?"
"Was he going in or coming out?" Mercer asked eagerly.
"Going in," Arden replied. "Along with two bodyguards."
"Alright," Harry decided. "Arden, you wait for Mercer to replace you, come back here and suit up. We'll see if we can't follow him to wherever he is hiding all his ill-gotten gains."
It was an idea he and Mercer had bandied around during their evening meal the day before. A smuggler and criminal of Lizard's stature, they assumed, would have some interesting things lying around in his operating base; money, drugs and weapons were all distinct possibilities. As were slaves, going by the man's business record. Why let some other lowlife take these things after the end of Lizard's criminal career, the defector had argued. They had an opportunity to take dangerous contraband out of circulation right then and there.
Unlike the previous plan, which had called for Mercer to be only lightly armoured, given that he would have been standing around for hours, he was now called upon to be as fully enclosed as possible. So, in addition to the officer's chest plate, he adorned the greaves, thigh guards and bracers of a stormtrooper and concealed them under his wide coat. Finally, he put on the helmet that they had been foregoing for their surveillance activities. Harry tapped him on the head with his staff to apply a disillusionment charm.
The wizard had just begun, with some very welcome help from Leia, to put on his own protective gear when a disembodied voice by the door to the small corridor began speaking.
"Oh, you're so cute together," Arden's voice said from the slight shimmer where a Dathomirian witch should be. "Don't let me interrupt you."
Predictably, both Harry and Leia started to redden rapidly after they had overcome the jump scare they had just been put through; despite all their unusual circumstances, they were still teenagers, after all.
"You're getting way to good at sneaking up on people," Harry commented after having finally taken the disillusionment off of Arden, who simply laughed it off and started gathering her own gear.
"I've spent half my life scouting and fighting," she replied simply. "Being virtually invisible makes it almost ridiculously easy. Can you help me with this?"
Holding out a pair of white stormtrooper bracers, Arden turned to Leia, who was looking at her in annoyance.
"I still think I could help," the Princess complained, a rather miffed expression affixed on her face. "I've had training with blasters for years, same with hand-to-hand combat."
"And yet," Arden interrupted before Leia really had a chance to get going, "taking you with us would be a liability. You're important beyond this immediate fight, in which we happen to not need you, so we would have to protect you, which would be a distraction. So, for the moment, you're more valuable in preventing anyone from stealing our shiny new ship."
Despite her outward grumbling, Harry fancied himself enough of a judge of character to know that Leia was well aware of everything she had just been told beforehand. Maybe she had just been hoping to get a new perspective that would allow her to help, because otherwise, she would not allow herself to. That sense of duty, he decided, was quite remarkable.
"Ready?" Harry asked Arden as soon as he saw she had put on the helmet. The witch nodded, holstered her blaster rifle and ambled out the door, while he turned his sights on Leia.
"Be careful," his fellow orphan said and, without warning, stepped forward to plant a small kiss on his cheek. "I'll keep your ship safe."
Without another word, Leia turned around, grabbed a blaster and planted herself in view of the entry hatch and the scanners, seemingly very intent on honouring her promise; Harry had no illusions about what she thought he was supposed to do regarding her demand. Still, while being careful was not really in his blood, he sure would try.
OOOOOOOO
"I hate staking things out…" Harry complained quietly as they were working up to their fourth hour of waiting in a dingy side-alley. The cold did not help, either.
"You done something like this before?" Mercer asked curiously. "You seem a bit young for that."
The wizard snorted. "It wasn't by choice," Harry assured the man grumblingly. "More importantly, it was in the summer and on a much nicer planet."
"Shh," Arden hissed from the mouth of the alley, "I see our guy coming out. Looks pretty drunk."
Immediately, the two men rushed next to her to look for their quarry. Indeed, at the door of the illegal gambling den stood the man they only knew as Lizard and recognised from the picture they had seen of him. He was stumbling, clearly inebriated, and actually had to be held up by one of the two guards that were flanking him on both sides.
"Pitiful," the witch muttered. "Being what he is, he should always expect an attack and never let himself become so… weak and vulnerable."
Disregarding Arden's slighted warrior instincts for the moment, Harry left the alley behind and started following after Lizard and his two bodyguards, still disillusioned, making him invisible in the dark of night. Only the almost imperceptible sounds of muted footsteps told him the others were following him.
The group went after their target for what seemed like hours, though it was probably only mere minutes, his inebriated state making the man much slower than he otherwise would have been. Even his guards, who had been watching everyone and everything like a threat earlier were becoming more and more distracted by their stumbling and slurring boss. When they finally reached the city limits, Harry took down the disillusionment charms on the others, content in the knowledge that the almost complete darkness would hide them for the mere moments that were left of their chase.
"This is just too good an opportunity to pass off," he told the others quietly. "We'll ambush them, then I get the information we need in a… different way."
As for himself, the wizard apparated down the fractured road they had been following, a strong silencing charm preventing the crack from alerting his quarry. He dispelled the disillusionment on himself, and then their trap struck.
As per bounty hunting regulations (and was the Empire not one to talk) they could not simply shoot and ask questions later. Instead, they had to give their target the opportunity to surrender. Not that Harry particularly cared about regulations the Empire had in place, but it might cost them the bounty they needed to pay the smuggler.
"Halt," he called loudly and with all the authority he could muster, despite how ridiculous he must have looked with his staff in one hand and a blaster in the other. "You the one they call 'the Lizard'."
The drunken criminal, despite his guards' best efforts to hold him back, stumbled forward with an evil glint of cruelty in his eyes.
"Fancy yourself a bounty hunter, runt? I'll show you," he declared boldly. Then, he retched on the ground.
"Just to be clear. You are indeed the one called 'the Lizard' and you are resisting arrest?" Harry clarified, just as the bodyguards started looking around nervously. It was too late however, as their boss started pulling the blaster pistol from his holster.
Within moments of each other, each of the three was hit in the chest by one of the blue rings indicative of a stun discharge and they all crumpled to the ground bonelessly. Immediately, the three hunters were on them, either binding each of their captives with cuffs they had 'liberated' from the Imperial armoury on the battle station or, in Harry's case, simply using an incarcerus.
"So, Boss," Mercer joked, glancing at Harry, "what are we going to do with these two?" He pointed at the two incapacitated bodyguards. A fascinating thought in mind, the 'Boss' grabbed for the com-link that was fastened to his belt.
"Leia, you there?" he asked, hoping his idea had merit.
"Where else would I be?" came the somewhat snarky reply, although there was no real bite to it. "How can I help the valiant bounty hunters?"
The 'Boss' of the 'valiant bounty hunters' (and if Leia's displeasure with the profession had not been clear before, it certainly was now) chuckled a little before answering. "Do you think you can bring the ship… wait a second."
He turned to the one companion he had had the longest. "Arden, where are we?"
The witch raised an eyebrow, as if silently judging him for lacking the foresight to always know something this important. Still, she replied, "North of the city, around one kilometre along the old road."
"Thanks," Harry said, before returning to his com connection. "We're around one kilometre north of the city along an old road. Do you think you can bring the Morningstar here? I want to check, whether there are any outstanding bounties on the two bodyguards we captured, and I'd rather not carry them all the way back into the city."
"Be right there," Leia replied promptly. "I had the engines warmed up, just in case."
Only a few minutes had passed, as the darkness was pierced by the blindingly bright lights affixed to the front of the Morningstar, which, in Harry's mind, did lend further credence to the name he had chosen for his ship. So, while he busied himself with their incapacitated main target, Arden and Mercer took their two other captives inside.
"Rennervate!" Harry muttered, carefully limiting the power he sent into his staff; he had no intention of having the Lizard wake up fully. As soon as his eyes were open enough, the wizard added the second spell. "Legilimens."
What he found inside the man's mind was not pretty; he had been exposed to a lot of depravity during his years of school, both first- and second-hand, but Riddle had at least had the halfway decent excuse of being an unrepentant nutjob. Lizard, on the other hand, was simply greedy and willing to do anything for a decent payday.
"He doesn't know a lot about those two, either," he managed to press out after retreating out of the criminal's mind. "They were never involved in his business beyond protecting him, so they would not be tempted to simply kill him and take over."
"Any idea who they are?" Leia asked over his right shoulder, on which she had just placed a comforting hand in a kind of echo of the gesture he had made when they were talking about Alderaan days earlier.
"He had his suspicions," Harry answered. "Look for deserters. Uhh, as soon as we've smoked out their lair, I'll have to take a long shower, after being inside that guy's head."
The Princess threw him a nervous, yet intensely doubtful glance. "Are you sure that's a good idea?" she asked cautiously, worry evident in every syllable. "You look like you could throw up at any moment, and the others are tired, too."
Harry sighed wearily. "Yeah, I am. He learned from almost being taken down by the Imperials, and only trusts a few people with the location of his base. They only have a few guards standing watch over drugs, slaves, credits, weapons…"
Instead of wasting further breath talking, the young wizard stomped up the ramp into the Morningstar intent on finding something to drink to quell the upset rifling through Lizard's mind had caused him.
OOOOOOOO
"Homenum revelio," Harry muttered. He was standing next to the mouth of a cave, Arden next to him, Mercer on the opposite side of the entrance. Just as expected, the spell showed the presence of over twenty people. Many of the contacts were clustered together; these, he took to be the slaves in their cages. The other five were scattered around system of tunnels stretching out beyond the black hole that was the main entrance to the secret lair.
"23 people," he told the other two quietly. "18 clustered together in cages or something similar, five scattered around, two of them close to the entrance. On three, I put up a shield, you take out the two guards in the front."
Receiving nods from bot Arden and Mercer, Harry held up his left hand and counted. One, two three.
"Protego," the mage incanted, and a glowing shield appeared in front of him as he jumped into the middle of the entranceway to the dark cave. Immediately, his companions were on either side and firing, their blasters still on stun. While Mercers shot connected, shortly followed by a satisfying 'thunk' as the hit guard crumpled to the ground, Arden had fired off hers a fraction of a second later, allowing her target to crouch behind a metal barrier set up in front of a heavy door leading into the base proper.
Within moments, blaster bolts started hitting the shield, and Harry started really feeling the drain on his strength, as those highly energetic projectiles pounded the barrier he had set up. Not to be undone by such a simple thing as an armed and forewarned adversary, Arden set herself in motion, while Mercer kept peppering the area around their hunkered-down foe. Before the guard had much of an opportunity to react to the approaching danger, he had been violently wacked across the head with the butt of an E-11.
"How… anticlimactic," she huffed annoyedly, looking at the felled criminal.
Mercer fixed her in a disapproving stare at hearing that. "Don't get too cocky; there's still three left."
The group formed up around the door and one unlocking charm later, they filed into the cavern. The large room was mostly empty, the sole exception being a vehicle Harry assumed was one of the speeder things the people in this reality used instead of cars. Rather, in this case it would probably be more accurately called a transporter. Intent on finishing the whole business as soon as possible, Harry pointed his hand at where he had felt the other people, he did not take to be captives.
That was, when things turned south.
Out of nowhere, a hail of blaster bolts came flying into their direction. Well-trained reflexes, honed by both Quidditch and a simple need to survive, let Harry erect another shield that protected both him and Mercer. Arden though was less lucky. Just as before, and despite the debate she had had with Leia about taking unnecessary risks earlier, the Dathomirian witch had taken a more aggressive stance in her exploration of the hidden base.
A scream echoed from the walls as she fell to the ground, clutching her chest, and he felt eerily reminded of hearing similar sounds during the battle of Hogwarts. Despite his worry for his friend, Harry managed to stay somewhat put together, as he advanced with Mercer next to him, both still sheltered behind his shield charm.
"I'll get you an opening," the wizard muttered during a lull in the fighting. "But I'll have to drop my shield to do it."
Understanding flashing in his eyes, Mercer nodded and held his rifle at the ready, just as Harry dropped the shield charm and instead mutter, "Evanesco."
At the back of the room, a barrier similar in style to the ones the guard outside had taken cover behind, suddenly vanished, showing a completely flummoxed, barely dressed and heavily tattooed man desperately trying to cool down what looked like an overheated weapon. He did not get a chance, for as soon as he was visible, the man was hit with Mercer's stunner and crumpled to the ground.
Once again Harry swept over the caves with the presence revealing charm and was relieved to still find the other two presences he took to be guards where he had felt them first.
"You take a look at Arden, I'll sort out the last two," he decided, just before quickly slipping down a corridor to the side. Indeed, one door later he found two very much asleep guards, a man and a woman, who were both quickly stunned and bound. Only then did he allow his fear for Arden fill his mind, and he rushed back into the main cavern.
To his great surprise, the woman was already up again, if a little worse for wear. In fact, she was leaning against the truck parked in the cave, the severely burnt piece of armour lying beside her, and holding the right side of her chest.
"I'll be okay," the witch assured him as she saw him watching her closely. "I'll be a bit sore for a few days, nothing more." Obviously noticing how doubtful he still must have looked, she added, "Really, I'll be fine."
Harry nodded, mollified in the knowledge that his friend was not in any serious danger or pain. With his staff-free hand, he pulled out the communicator and contacted Leia on the Morningstar.
OOOOOOOO
"That's a big load of credits," Mercer commented, staring at the pile of currency they had found in what could only be Lizard's 'office', tucked away in a safe that had not stood up all that well to Harry's magic. "I'd have had to work months, maybe years to earn that much cash."
"How much is it," the mage questioned, his eyes as riveted on the glimmering pile as those of the people beside them.
"No idea," the Imperial defector replied. "As I said, never seen such a load of money. Most people just use credit chips these days, anyway. I'll get to counting, I suppose."
Harry nodded in reply before leaving first the office and then the cave system itself; despite the nefarious purpose it had served, he was actually somewhat impressed by how well-hidden the base had been. From outside, only a glimpse of the wall with the guard post was visible, and the true scope of the underground lair was impossible to discern. On the flat surface in front of the mouth of the cave Leia had landed the Morningstar, and some of the better-off slaves they had freed were already helping to bring on board the loot that did not have to be counted beforehand.
A few dozen metres away they had piled up the drugs, spice they called the stuff, and it was there that Harry now made his way. With glee at getting something as dangerous as he had been assured this glitterstim was, he waved his staff and lit the whole pile on fire.
Only to then immediately extinguish it again as the fumes burned in his eyes.
"Right, don't burn drugs while you're standing right next to them," he muttered as memories of burning cauldrons and the interesting changes they could make to people filled his head.
"Harry," he heard Leia's voice call from the direction of his ship. Indeed, as he turned, he could see the Princess hurrying over. "I found out who our two guests are."
If she herself had not been enough to catch his attention, which she certainly was, that was guaranteed to get him to listen.
"You were right," the Princess continued. "They're deserters, former Imperial Army. Can't tell you much more than their names, though."
"Names are always a good way to start," Harry replied jovially, happy about the good deed the had done that day. 18 freed slaves were nothing to sniff at, after all.
"Javoc Perdiv and Corsek Betsby, then," Leia supplied the names. "Other than desertion, there is no bounty out for either of them."
During their talk, they had ambled closer to the loading ramp, which they were now ascending. Through the crew quarters, they finally reached the port cargo bay, where their 'guests' were currently detained. As a delightful surprise, both of the men they wanted to talk to were already awake again, while Lizard, perhaps due to the sleeping charm Harry had placed on him, was still out for the count.
"Hello, gentlemen," he greeted the obviously wary deserters. "Don't worry, no one here is going to hand you over to the Empire."
His proclamation did a lot to calm the two, as did being given the keys to the cuffs they were still wearing.
"We do, however, want to make you an offer."
OOOOOOOO
"53730 credits," Mercer recounted his counting, while all of them were, once again, staring at the pile of credits Lizard had gathered in his lair. "Any plans? I assume 'Ryncol and strip club' won't be acceptable, right? Ow…"
He had been punched into his upper arm by Arden. Hard.
"I was just joking," he complained, then hid behind Harry and added, "Mostly."
This time, he only got raised eyebrows in response, and from both females that were in the room, too.
"But seriously, this much money should not be squandered," the deserter continued, now much more matter-of-factly. "I've served on and around a world like this; with some credits wandering into the right pockets, we could make Harry here into a legitimate bounty hunter, with a permit, a Captain's license and everything else. Best thing, we can then claim the entire bounty for Lizard, too."
From the looks on everyone's faces, people seemed to like the idea; truth be told, Harry did too. It was the closest thing he could be to an auror in this new reality of his without selling his soul by serving the Empire. And going around, actually being paid for catching bad guys for a change, all the while getting to see a galaxy so much greater than he ever could have imagined? Well, it sounded like a dream come true.
"I still want you to take a cut though," he proclaimed, looking at Arden and Mercer. "Not you, Leia," he added teasingly. "We're doing this to pay your debts, after all."
The glare she shot him was somewhat undercut by the amused twinkling in her eyes; obviously her distaste for bounty hunters was somewhat mollified by who was doing it.
"I consider this an investment into the future," the older man replied stubbornly. "If, after everything, there's some left over, by all means, hold a blaster to my head and I'll take it. What, we make a good team, only makes sense we stay together." The last bit had obviously been added for Harry's benefit, as he had looked a bit dumbfounded, while Arden just nodded sagely.
"We can choose, who to hunt, so I can still keep the peace like it was my goal when I joined the military, without having to go after people I don't think should be punished, just because they have an unpopular opinion," he explained, actually managing to hit the nail on the head, as far as 'the Boss' was concerned. "We could even help out the Rebellion from time to time."
Given the wide acclaim these ideas found, even Harry's stubbornness was whittled down eventually, and he conceded to their plans. Accordingly, he soon found himself in the smaller landspeeder, Mercer said it was an X-34, that had been hidden behind the larger truck, and was being shown how to control the thing. As it turned out, it was not all that hard a thing to do, and the older man soon had him slowly manoeuvre the fast and nimble craft out of the hidden 'garage entrance' to the smugglers' den.
Hovering as it was about a meter above the ground, the torn-up, unmaintained road was no problem for the vehicle, although Harry kept having to remind himself of that as they drifted through the equally torn-up landscape of Grandine. Quickly they reached the spaceport where, aside from the docking facilities, the only notable Imperial presence could be found. In this case, notable meant that there was a building with the Imperial crest and a single, distracted guard who did not even blink before waving them through.
The picture that the inside of the building painted was not much different. There was a single counter with a single clerk, sitting behind a console, tiredly playing around with a credit chip. The two of them entering jostled the woman out of her stupor, receiving a stare that made Harry think she was torn between happiness at some kind of a distraction from her workday and severe annoyance at actually having to work.
"Hello, Miss," Mercer greeted the clerk. "My associate here would like to acquire a number of permits. We would be willing to agree to any extra fee that is required to… expedite approval."
Where before a look of annoyance had rested on the clerk's face, there was now an acquisitive gleam shining in her eyes.
"Of course, I am delighted to help any Imperial citizen with navigating the bureaucracy," she said almost pleasantly, though that shimmer of greed was still very much in place.
"Well, a Captain's license, a Peace-Keeping and a B23-1-14 permit would be a good place to start. A transport license would not hurt, either," Mercer continued, and by the expression on the woman's face it was right obvious she was already planning what to do with the money she would earn as a 'bonus' from this transaction.
"Ah, forging a life by upholding the law of the Empire, I see, Mr…."
"Dash, Vincent Dash," Harry replied promptly using the fake name he had thought up; he did not know, why he had picked that particular name, he just knew he liked it. "I'm from Coruscant."
"Oh, I'm sure you are Mr…. Dash," the clerk replied with a knowing smile. "Usually, what you described would take weeks, and it would take consultation with the Imperial Bureau of Citizenship. That's not something you would want, would you?"
"Not particularly. Weeks is just too long a wait," the wizard admitted.
"Yes, I'm sure it is the waiting time that is the problem," the corrupt clerk said glibly. "Fortunately, those wait times, as well as any other requirements, can easily be waived for the slight fee of only 20000 credits."
Harry was just about to balk at the exorbitant cost, but Mercer's hand on his shoulder stopped him. "That is very fortunate, that you could help us navigate the bureaucracy like that," the older man said genially. "Come now, Vincent, we should keep this lady no longer than need be and let her take your picture."
And that was what they did, and the picture was soon followed by a retina scan. However, when he realised there was a field on the license calling for DNA, he got a bit worried. He had absolutely no interest of letting the Empire get a hand on his genetic information as, while he did not know all that much about the topic, he was quite sure the key to his magical abilities was somewhere in his DNA.
"Don't worry," Mercer reassured him, "they don't sequence everything, only a few highly individual parts that allow someone to easily be identified by. Cataloguing every single base for everyone with one of these permits would be too much, even for the Imperial bureaucracy."
Still, Harry was only mollified when he was allowed to witness his blood sample first be processed and then destroyed. He received some strange looks when he signed with his new fake name using the script he had learned as a child, but wrote it off as inconsequential, and before long, Vincent Dash was licensed to pilot a ship, drive cargo speeder-trucks and claim bounties on the planet-, sector-, regional- and galactic-level.
"We'll be back later," Mercer assured the clerk. "And we'll bring something that will make your superiors very happy with you.