Capítulo 26: Chapter 26 – Mission The First
Harry Potter, The Jedi That Would Not Die
Chapter 26 – Mission The First
39BBY
Things had proceeded well for Harry and Hermione after that. Surprisingly Alema and Hermione got on rather well, at least they did when they got over the initial slavery/anti-slavery disagreement and started discussing how even when Hermione was not around there would at least be someone there to try to keep Harry out of trouble, to which Harry mumbled something about 'four masters'.
The young magicians had now been at the Temple for over five years and had both had their nineteenth birthdays. They had managed to arrange a small party for Hermione's eighteenth birthday (which came before Harry's) with a few of their fellow padawans and the odd friend knight and master attending, though they did it on the sly as the Jedi did not normally celebrate birthdays and they were pretty sure beforehand that the Council would not officially approve if they all knew. As such they were quite surprised half way through the evening when some of the rooms occupants had had a bit too much to drink that Master Yoda himself turned up at the door of Aayla, Harry and Alema's quarters (as it was larger than Coleman and Hermione's) and after surprising them all by congratulated her himself and not telling them off stated that, "A crime it is not, celebrating turning of age. Happens if does but once in a life time. Have fun and enjoy I hope you will," before adding with a sly grin towards some of the more inebriated guests, a couple of whom were having trouble standing, "So long as habit this does not become."
As a result of this when Harry's birthday came around several months later they asked Master Yoda via Coleman, as Hermione and Harry could not really bring themselves to ask the question of the Grand Master themselves, if they could use one of the largely disused hangers at the base of the Temples towers to hold this one and if they could hold a slightly larger party. They got the ok but the party turned out to be quite a bit bigger than they intended and the next day there were quite a few Jedi in the Temple suffering from rather bad hangovers and quite a few odd occurrences throughout the building, no one came forward to explain how all the High Council Chamber's chairs came to be positioned on the roof of the tower or how one of the Consular-class Cruisers came to be upside down the following morning, thankfully the ship had been auxiliary power running so the artificial gravity was still turned on for the droids and all the lose objects on board the ship or else the cleanup would have been a lot worse.
Both Harry and Hermione were excelling in their classes; Hermione had unsurprisingly taken huge leaps ahead of almost all the other padawans in her studies and had as good as finished the academic side of the jedi training and thanks to the additional training she undertook from Master Yaddle she had picked up some good skills in a variety of the more difficult and unusual Force techniques.
Harry's was an average student in the academic subjects, he was no longer behind in some the way he had been a few years ago but he was not excelling at all of them either, but that was fine for as it was a couple of years earlier his flying and lightsaber skills more than made up for this.
His lightsaber skills had increased in leaps and bounds, he could now keep a full on lightsaber duel going with his Master for a good half an hour before he had to give in but he always felt satisfied that she was never up for another round at the end of the duel either. He could also take on Battlemaster Master Drallig for a while before being overwhelmed.
Aayla and Drallig had got their wish in the end as regards teaching Harry Form VII, Master Windu had duelled him again and had watched him train with both of his other teachers for hours on end and had eventually decided to teach him the controversial Form which as expected he took to like a fish to water. There had initially been some worry about the darker nature of the Form due to the darkness in Harry's past but Master Windu saw no sign of Harry going too far into the dark with his skills.
Their magical training had continued to progress too with both Harry and Hermione knowing vast quantities of spells and other useful information, they had also started examining some of the ways that magic and technology could be used together and one of the most surprising things they had worked out was that apparating appeared to be a form of very short distance hyperspace travel. Hermione had reasoned that, as to travel around the circumference of any average sized colonisable astrological body (which was about as far as any wizard could ever attempt to apparate on Earth not that many tried to go more than a couple of hundred miles in a single jump) at low hyperspace speeds that took only a tiny fraction of a second it explained why wizards were able to survive it in the vacuum of hyperspace and were never actually aware of entering or exiting hyperspace as the process was just too quick. There was precedence too as there were space dwelling sentient creatures called oswaft that were able to naturally travel through hyperspace between worlds, the size of their vast brain filled bodies which could be hundreds of meters across allowing them to calculate the detailed navigational information required to navigate between stars. Hermione further speculated that although humans had vastly smaller brains as they never tried to apparate through hyperspace lanes, just from one point to another within the same hyperspace junction and as the journeys were short enough for them not to have to worry about galactic drift, that they were not required to do the hugely complicated mathematics necessary to make the jump and hence they were able to apparate successfully.
The whole thing had given Harry a huge headache when she tried to explain it to him in scientific terms, so she had to explain that 'wizards can apparate through hyperspace but their brains are too small to let them go more than a few hundred miles'. Hermione had written up a paper on this subject which had earned her a commendation from the Council of First Knowledge and although she had done much study on the process neither her or Harry really wanted to try it without someone there who knew how to apparate to help them in case they injured themselves.
They had also started working on ways to integrating technology and magic and to that end they were granted permission to visit a junkyard and select a derelict ship to work on to that end. It had startled all those who knew of it when they came back with a strikingly familiar rather battered looking Consular-Class Cruiser called the Radiant VI which had been scrapped just a couple of years earlier according to the ships log after a nasty accident which had caused it to be missing one of its engines.
Harry and Hermione spent quite a while making the ship work again, making quite a few upgrades along the way so as to make the ship more useful to them including upgrading the engines to make the ship much fast both in hyperspace and in normal flight, installing better control systems to improve the manoeuvrability, additional weapons systems, some of which were automated to make it better able to defend itself, acquiring a couple of old R series droids for repairs and as backups for the navigation computer, fitting improves shields and more comfortable sleeping accommodations.
Almost all of these additions were unnecessary but thankfully the pair had allies in the forms of Master Adi Gallia, Master Saesee Tiin and newly appointed to the High Council Master Plo Koon, all of whom were Jedi Aces and were all fascinated in the project and spent some of their time assisting in improving the ship. Although barely any of the additions were necessary having three members of the High Council taking a personnel interest in the project meant it was very easy to get optional extras sanctioned and funded, though they had had to fight to get the weapons systems installed.
Once they had got to the point where the ship was flight worthy and while some of the aforementioned upgrades were still to be fitted, Hermione switched her role on the project from ship repair to magical integration while Harry continued the upgrades and repairs. She was much better at the theoretical side of the integration than Harry was so he was content to let her handle the research and continue to upgrade the ship only assisting her when it came to testing and installing the magical systems. He had become almost as skilled at repairing ships as he was at making and repairing lightsabers.
The first system they managed to integrate had been a mixed success, and that was an improvement to the upgraded control system. Hermione having found a book on broom charms and spells in those that they had brought from Earth had worked out ways of integrating them into the control system so that when the control column was moved the ships movement was partially powered by the manoeuvring engines and partially by the spells they had added. The initial test had looked good; Harry had been the test pilot as he was the most used to the charms, being the more skilled flier. It had all been going well with them managing to get the ship off the ground and performing minor turning motions and control surface movements while only about twenty feet off of the ground without the assistance of the engines until Harry sneezed.
Although he barely jolted the control column it was enough to slam the nose of the ship hard into the ground, completely wrecking the salon pod under the cockpit. It would not have been so bad if both of their Masters, their three patrons on the High Council and a large selection of interested masters, knights, padawans and initiates had not been watching at the time. The set back had prompted them to reduce the sensitivity of the spells slightly as well as giving them the idea of removing the salon pod and instead fitting some improved weapons systems and enhanced sensors in the nose instead of refitting the meeting room which would probably never be used.
As well as all the upgrades and magical enhancements they were doing they also decided to repaint and rename the ship, covering the rather faded and worn ambassadorial red paint, which was no longer appropriate as the ship was now armed, with a nice coat of black paint with white styling on top of it which had given Hermione the idea of using the finish to inscribe runes on the ship but that was something to be looked at later.
They went through many possible names; usually one of them came up with one before the other though of a reason why it was a bad idea. Enterprise, Voyager, Defiant, Andromeda, Tardis, Moya, Prometheus and Daedalus were all thought of then discarded. The closest they came to coming up with names they both liked were Marauder, but Hermione though it did not sound like the sort of name of ship that peacekeepers should have, and Phoenix which Harry thought did not work with the new paint job, so in the end they decided on the Raven.
As well as the two nineteen year old Jedi, the twenty one year old Alema was also doing well; she had spent several months at the Temple training with the padawans, her Force sensitivity meant that she picked things up quickly and it was not long before she was able to keep up with the Padawans when they were not using the Force to enhance their stamina and fitness.
She had then started alternating time at the Temple and at various ranger training facilities to get additional training for periods of a few months at a time, allowing her to continue to learn alongside the padawans whilst still allowing her to receive Ranger training.
It had taken a while but slowly over the course of a couple of years Alema had got less shy and although she was still very submissive to Harry and Aayla she had progressed to the point where she could even be tempted to play the odd prank or make a joke at her 'Master's' expense, nothing cruel but enough to get a laugh and bring her out of her shell.
Harry had been on a couple of missions with her so far and she had performed admirably and on the latter missions she had even managed to get the drop on an assassin who was disguised as a slave who thought that his target was undefended when the Jedi had had to move away to deal with another threat, little did she know that another protector was the 'slave' sitting right beside her.
It was currently one of the periods when she was off world with the other Rangers but it would not be long before she was back with her Master.
Laser blasts impacted the ground in front of the battalion as the moved through the woods.
"Incoming fire, get to cover now!"
Diving for the cover of the nearest tree, she managed to catch a glance at the source of the incoming fire just before she flattened herself against the trunk, bringing her riffle flat against her chest.
"I see them Captain," called Alema. "Five targets with rifles on that ridge to our left, range one hundred meters."
"Alright, Alema take Tenm and Blon and circle around to the left. Hiday, take the others and head around to the right and continue on to the objective, I will create a distraction with the other Rangers in the centre to allow you to move ahead. Once Alema's team have taken care of the snipers we will join you."
"Yes Captain," they replied before heading out as directed, Alema gesturing for the Human and the Sullustan to follow her through the denser undergrowth. It went quiet around them as the other teams drew fire from the enemies on the ridge, while they circled around up the sloped side of the hill.
As they neared the top Alema, raised her hand to stop their advance.
"What is it?" asked Tenm.
"Listen..." she replied. "Either two of the targets have been hit or two of them are no longer firing over the ridge. We need to-"
She was cut off as a blast of laser fire passed through the trees and struck Tenm, sending him to the ground.
"Cover," she shouted as she aimed in the direction of the incoming fire and fired a couple of shots before ducking back behind the tree and was pleased to hear the sound of a body hitting the ground. One down four to go.
She paused for a second and heard nothing but the sound of the wind in the trees, carefully leaning around the tree she flinched backwards just in time to avoid the laser bolt that flew passed her, spinning around to the other side of the tree she fired a return shot and watched as he went down too.
Gesturing Blon forward they carefully crept towards the edge of the ridge and sighted the three snipers. Ducking back behind cover she sent Blon a series of hand signals before moving around to form a crossfire between them, she waited the time she had given Blon before spinning out from behind her tree and opening fire upon the enemy.
The first one never even got the chance to turn, the second managed to spin on Blon, who had fired from the other direction and caught him in the leg dropping him to his knees a split second before Blon caught him in the chest leaving but one.
The last one was faster though, dodged their fire and ran straight at Alema knocking her rifle out of her hands before kicking her in the chest knocking her backwards so that the pair moved back into the tree line where the injured Blon could not help her.
Regaining a stable form she drew her vibro-bayonet and charged at the enemy soldier who was forced to use his gun to block her blade thrusts. They parried blows for a good thirty seconds before she managed to jam her blade into the space behind the guns trigger snapping it off rendering it useless.
Casting aside the useless weapon the human male, who was a good four inches taller than she was, drew his own blade and started circling her, she was in no rush to end the fight as all the while he was distracted fighting her he was not firing on the others.
They parried a few strokes and each got a few light cuts before the soldier managed to grasp her wrist during a parry and knocked her blade clear before knocking her to the ground and pressing his blade to her neck.
Just as he did so a loud claxon sounded and he withdrew, allowing her to stand albeit with her pride dented. She briefly checked her injuries to make sure they were not serious before turning as Tenm and Blon approached.
"Are you both ok?"
"Fine Alema," replied Tenm, while Blon nodded his annoyance at getting hit. "Good show you put on for me, I could just see you from my dead position."
"I lost," she sighed to herself.
"You lost to an instructor," came a deeper gruff voice from their left causing all three to turn and snap to attention as they saw the Ranger General approaching.
"You incapacitated or distracted all the enemy combatants despite greater odds, you kept a knife fight going with a Ranger Instructor for several minutes allowing valuable time that your battalion needed to get out of the range of the snipers and complete their mission and at my count you only fired five shots and only two of them missed, that's a good achievement for an Explorer."
"My team were all injured or killed General," she protested.
"Yes, but the odds were against you and you noticed the threat before the first shot was fired, sometimes casualties are inevitable. That sniper position was bound to be guarded and you managed to overcome the guards."
"Yes sir," she replied, still not really accepting that this was a victory.
"Regardless we do not have time to debate this; a request had come in from Coruscant, get your ship ready, you need to be in the air as soon as possible, your Jedi Padawan is being sent on a mission."
"You ready Hermione?"
"Almost Harry, just give me one...more...There, it's ready," she sighed rolling her way out from under the piece of hull plating she had been mounting to the stand, her face and overalls covered with dirt and lubricant. "Is the other piece in place?"
"Yeah, just finished adjusting it," replied Harry who was in a similar state of dress next to another mounted piece of hull plating. "As long as we get the angle right we should not have to worry about any stray bolts."
"What are you two working on today?" asked Aayla as she came down to the mechanics area of the Council Tower's Hanger to join the pair who were working a little way from where the Raven was located in the garage area of the hanger.
"We think we've worked out a way of increasing the defensive properties of the this hull plating Knight Aayla."
"Really, how so?" she asked coming to a stop beside them, only for Hermione to offer her a blaster.
"If you wouldn't mind firing at that bit of hull plating at an angle we will show you," Hermione replied as Harry drew one of his lightsabers and moved into a position a little way away from her.
She puzzled at his positioning but nonetheless aimed and fired at the piece of hull plating. Instead of creating a small hole or an area of damaged or charged metal the laser bolt ricocheted off towards Harry who used his lightsaber to redirect the bolt towards the other sheet of hull plating which it impacted against creating the predicted charred area of metal.
"Impressive," Aayla smiled, handing the blaster back. "How did you do it?"
"A modified reflection spell on the metal," explained Harry. "We managed to get it to reflect energy which caused the bolt to bounce off."
"But unfortunately the spell will not hold up long under the power of a full scale ship mounted laser or turbo-laser," added Hermione walking over to pick up a pad that was attached to sensors on the back of the plating and reading off the results. "We could of course put more power into the spell which might give you more protection but there is only so much power a pair of wizards can achieve when casting in tandem. At most we are only likely to get an extra one or two shots worth of protection per piece of hull plating for a full size ship laser before the spell breaks down."
"That's still two extra chances to stay alive," came the voice of Master Plo as he approached from the direction of the lift. "That could save your life in a battle situation. It's a good achievement; you have in a sense added ablative armour to the hull plating. Are you planning to continue to develop this line of research or are you planning to move into new areas?"
"I think Master Plo that there is not much further we can go on the defence line with this sort of spell;" explained Harry, "This sort of protection will not work against missiles or torpedoes and without more magic users we cannot really enhance the power of the spell without spending an inordinate amount of time on each piece of hull plating. We were planning on seeing if we could modify the spell to reflect light and sensor scans as well as energy blasts, that way we might be able to create a primitive cloaking device as well as enhancing the strength of the hull plating."
"The problem is as it will be reflecting light rather than bending it around the ship like a regular cloak," continued Hermione. "It would be fairly obvious if you were to walk up to it on the ground as you would likely see an angled reflection of yourself coming in the other direction or a distorted image of the ground and sky. It should be more effective in atmosphere or in space where it should only reflect more sky or space. There is the problem as regards reflecting sensor scans as they work by bouncing off of objects so unless the hull was specifically designed to scatter sensors it will probably not be any more effective than a normal ship's hull."
"I can see you have thought this out well," commented Master Plo, he was probably smiling as he said it, or at least he would have been if he wasn't wearing his breathing mask and if he had a mouth that could actually smile. "Tell me; is the Raven space worthy at the moment?"
"Yyyes Master," replied Harry slowly, not going where this was going. "The augmented sublight engines are working and the improved hyperdrive is online but the latter has not been tested yet."
"Well now's your chance, the Council has a mission for you and Masters Tiin, Gallia and myself think it would be a good way to test out the Raven under proper flight conditions."
"Yes Master," Hermione replied, her smile was so wide that she was likely to injure herself if she kept doing it for too long. "How long do we have before we need to be ready for the briefing?"
"Be up in the Council Chamber in half an hour for your mission information," he told them, turning to go before adding. "I...I would recommend taking a shower first."
Looking at each other they for the first time noticed how utterly covered in grease dirt and grime they were.
"I don't suppose you got the showers working in the ship did you?" asked Hermione.
"Only one," Harry replied. "Toss for it?"
"Yes," she replied pulling out a washer with scoring on one side of it before tossing it to him.
"Scored," she called.
"Plane it is. Let's- Hey!" he shouted as he took off towards the ship after Hermione who had, with a large grin on her face, decided to make the decision for them. "Cheat!"
Half an hour later the pair of them walked into the High Council Chamber in their normal attire following Aayla. Coleman was of course already in his seat.
"Knight Secura, Padawans Potter and Granger, good we can start," began Master Windu. "Have any of you ever heard of the planet Dagobah?"
The three of them shook their heads.
"It's in a remote area of the Outer Rim, a Republic survey team from Alderaan was sent to survey the planet but all contact has been lost. A new Alderaanian survey is preparing to head for the planet to do additional survey work and to discover the reason for the loss of contact."
"The survey team is being led by Senator Antillies of Alderaan," continued Coleman. "Being a cautious man and due to the suspicious loss of communications he had requested Jedi assistance as the vast majority of the survey team will be civilians who have never even handled a blaster."
"You are to take the Raven and head for Dagobah, depending on when the survey team departs will depend where and when your rendezvous with them. Depart as soon as the two of you are ready."
All three of them bowed before both of the padawans realised something.
"Both of us Master?" asked Hermione.
"Yes Padawan," replied Master Windu, "Padawan Potter and yourself."
"What about my Master?" asked Harry.
"She will not be going on this mission with you Padawan; this mission is for you and Padawan Granger alone."
"Alone," gasped Hermione.
"Yes Padawan," confirmed Coleman. "Aayla and I have been talking about this and we believe you are both ready for your first unsupervised mission, and considering how well you two work together it makes sense to send you both on the same mission."
"It is a good choice for a first mission as well," agreed Master Windu. "As you will have friends there in the form of Senator Antillies who you have both worked with before and the mission also provides a chance for responsibility as advisors to the Senator as well as security if necessary for the team without the burden of command."
"And in the event that you need help urgently we can dispatch support from the Jedi Praxeum in the nearby system of Bpfassh," added Coleman.
"You primary mandate is to uncover the reasons for the loss of contact with the previous expedition and to protect the new team should it be necessary," explained Master Windu. "Once you have uncovered the reason for the loss of the previous teams communications, signal us and if you determine that there is no security threat then assist in the surveying process."
"Master," began Harry, "Can-"
"Explorer Ani has already been notified and will be joining you, depending on when you leave you might get there before or after her and the researchers."
"Is there anything else we need to know Master?" asked Hermione, who was struggling to control her excitement at the prospect of their own mission.
"Only to leave as soon as you are able as the survey team will be soon. Dismissed."
It did not take long to get the Raven fuelled and ready to go and after a quick goodbye with their Masters, Harry and Hermione were on their way into space.
"I can't believe it, our first solo mission," gasped Hermione as she programmed the navicomputer. "What do you think will happen?"
"Probably very little," Harry replied from his position in the pilot's seat. "First missions are supposed to be fairly quiet just to get us used to being on our own. Aayla's first mission was the months long exploration mission with Obi-Wan and Qui-Gon where she found us."
"And look how that turned out. Navicomputer plotted."
"Hmm...Good point. I suppose we had better be prepared for the worst then. What do you think; Pirates? Disease? Hallucinogenic drugs?"
Harry smiled.
"If I did not know better I would say that you had been watching too much television if I didn't know the nearest set wasn't hundreds of light years away...Or maybe reading too many fantasy novel." He then paused and turned to her with a questioning look. "There weren't any fantasy or murder mysteries in the books you 'borrowed' from the library where there?"
"Not that I know of...though there was an original copy of a Midsummer Night's Dream written by Shakespeare himself, he wasn't very good at spelling. The wizard who brought it to the library thought it was an accurate description of what Muggles thought the Magical World was like back then."
"Wizards," Harry laughed in disbelief. "Anyway I doubt anything of interest will happen. Prepare to enter hyperspace."
AUTHOR'S NOTE: Not much happened in this chapter I'm afraid, it was basically just to get you guys updated on what has happened since Alema joined them and until they both turned nineteen.
This chapter also gave me a chance to incorporate some of your suggestions as regards magic/technology merging in the form of the Raven, those of you who have read a lot of sci-fi will recognise most of the suggested ship names I suggested, and those of you who read other stories like this will recognise my tip of my hat to the story that inspired me to write this one in the suggestion of the ship name Marauder.
I was originally going to have their ship be a large fighter, scout ship something similar but I quite like the look of the Consular-class as it's not limited to carrying only a couple of people, it's a commonly used class of ship in the Republic and later most of the Republics get outfitted for military service in the Clone Wars so the ability to upgrade it was already there in EU.
I am keeping some in reserve for possible use later but suggestions for other magic/technology mixes are welcome.
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