Chapter Twelve: Choices

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: I'm back, thanks for your patience. As normal, Chap 11 review responses are in my forums. Thank you for reading.

Chapter Twelve: Choices

With the very first group, Harry started feeling a sense of nausea in his stomach. The Imperials who entered did not wear the sharply tailored uniforms of Imperial naval officers. They wore dull-grey single-piece jumpsuits with notices of rank on their breast pockets. They entered nervously, with wide eyes constantly scanning for threats.

They did not act like enlisted personnel about to meet their officers. They acted like victims fearing a terrible punishment. Worse yet, they were all kids. Most of the men had little need to worry about being clean shaven since only a handful had anything to shave. There was far more acne than facial hair. Most looked pale, then, and moved with the uncoordinated clumsiness of those who were not quite adults, but no longer children.

Harry stunned them anyway. Group by group they came, like lambs to the slaughter. The oldest could not have been more than twenty, while some looked like they were sixteen if a day. Harry realized, with a growing sense of dread that they were conscripts.

The final group, however, was different. Though they were dressed the same, they moved with a fluid grace that spoke of training and coordination. And they were armed.

The moment they walked into the bridge and saw Harry's people, they scattered. Harry's area-wide stunner only caught two of the five, while the other three rolled away with blasters at the ready. Fleur cried out as a blaster bolt burned through her magical shield and hit her thigh. The shooter died when an enraged Bill vaulted over her and cast an Egyptian curse that boiled the man's blood in his veins. The Imperials' screams distracted the other two men long enough for Maria to summon their blasters.

Harry bound them both, but did not stun them. Not yet. With a nod to Maria, he stalked toward the two captured men and brutally legillimised them both. He stepped back, shaking from the realization of how very close they had come to being destroyed.

"What, Potter?" Maria asked, upon noticing his expression.

"Imperial Security Bureau officers," he said. "Spies sent to make sure the conscripts toe the line on the ship. They had secret comlinks on them and were fully prepared to order strikes against the ship if they discovered the command crew had been compromised."

The two still conscious ISB officers stared at Harry wide-eyed. One shouted, "Jedi scum!"

Harry did not hesitate and killed them both using a cardiac curse that stopped their heart.

"Kill the others in this group," Harry ordered without hesitation. "These men are dangerous, more dangerous than anyone else on the ship. We can't afford to let them ever get back to the Empire."

Maria stared to protest, but before she could Bill cast the same heart-stopping curse on the two stunned men, who died in their sleep as a result. He then turned back to treating Fleur's wound.

"We can't just go around killing people in cold blood!" De La Rosa said.

"Dearie, you're not an Auror anymore. You're a soldier. It's your job to kill the enemy." Both Harry and De La Rosa turned in surprise as Madam Malkin left her station and walked to the dead men. "You saw how they moved. And I know for a fact that Miss Delacour's magical shield was as strong as you could ask. That gun burned right through it. If we didn't get these men down fast, we'd be hurting. We're at war, and they're the enemy."

With that, the usually ebullient witch vanished the dead bodies, one after the other with, deliberate motions of her wand.

"That's murder," De La Rosa insisted stubbornly.

"That's survival," Malkin retorted. "The fact I'm old doesn't mean I know nothing. It means I've seen real war first hand. The first rule that our Colonel taught us is that if it comes down to a choice, make sure the other side dies first."

With that, the old witch made her way back to her new station. "We have about thirty minutes left."

Charlie, meanwhile, had joined Bill in treating Fleur's leg injury. The Imperius-controlled captain sat with a blank expression in the middle of the bridge, completely unaware of anything happening around him. Harry made his way into the conference room where the conscripts were laid out in their underwear. They did so to remove any obvious communication devices, but doing so brought home just how young they all were.

Maria followed after him, still visibly upset. "Are we going to kill all these people too? Murder them in their sleep?"

Behind her, Charlie followed since evidently Fleur was doing fine. "Why not? It's not like we have the food or resources to keep prisoners. We're taking their ship, just like they took our world from us. Bugger the lot of 'em!"

"I won't be a party of murder on this scale!" De La Rosa said. "Even in war, that is not done!"

Harry, thinking of Oliver Wood's daughter and all the others he had dressed as conscripts in their failed flight from Despayre, found himself leaning toward De La Rosa's position on the matter.

Choice. The word echoed in Harry's mind with Ginny's voice, as if her spirit had assumed the role of his broken conscience. While the others argued, Harry stepped to the nearest girl who did not look any older than seventeen if a day.

She sputtered awake with wide eyes at his Rennervate and glanced around the room at the bodies. Charlie and Maria both stopped arguing in surprise at having one of the prisoners suddenly awake.

Terror virtually rolled off of her, likely not helped by the fact she wore nothing but a black sports bra and black grand-ma style panties that were likely Imperial issue. She saw Harry squatting down in front of her and struggled not to scream. "Please don't hurt me," she whimpered with tears in her eyes.

"What's your name?" Harry asked, ignoring his crew while struggling to moderate his voice.

"Attan," she whispered. "Attan Freddell, Shipman 3rd Class. It's my…it's my first cruise."

"How old are you, Attan?" Harry asked.

"I'm seventeen, sir," she managed to stutter.

"Why did you join the Navy?"

She blinked in surprise at the question. "I didn't…I mean, our village didn't meet the recruitment quota. My brother was the only income with mum and dad dead, and my sisters were too young. I was just another mouth to feed. If I went, they'd let Tan keep working and… please, Force, don't kill me."

Switching to English, Harry said over his shoulder, "Still think we should kill them, Charlie?"

"I don't get it," Charlie admitted.

"They're all conscripts," Harry said grimly. "Pressganged. The Empire goes to a world and demands a number of conscripts, and they don't care how they get them. Attan here volunteered so her siblings would have a chance to live. I'm willing to bet the rest of them are the same."

"Harry, that may be true," Charlie argued. "But we still don't have the resources to keep these people prisoner. What are we supposed to do?"

"Portkey them to the planet," De La Rosa said. "When we have the ship secured and repaired, we Portkey them down. No one else has to die."

"Or we could give them a choice," Harry said, switching back to Basic.

Attan's wide eyes were panning back and forth as she tried to follow a conversation in a language she'd never heard before. At Harry's last statement, she paled. "Ch-choice, sir?" She looked down at herself and tears welled at her eyes. "I'll do whatever you want, sir. Just like those ISB guys. Just please, don't kill me."

Harry could hear Charlie suck in an angry breath behind him. The dragon wrangler had been around enough to know exactly what Attan was saying.

"You knew about the ISB officers?" Harry asked.

The young woman paled further and stuttered a little before wordlessly nodding. "And they made you do favours for them, right?"

Again a nod. "Me and the other girls," she finally said. "Lette said no first time. Captain had her flogged for insubordination or something. Conscripts don't get any rights. None of us said no after that. Are they all…are they dead?"

"Sleeping, Attan, just like you were a second ago," Harry lied. He stood and walked back to Charlie and De La Rosa. "I have an idea about them. We give them the option of joining the Rebellion."

Charlie stared. "And you think they're just going to say yes and be done with it? What if there are more spies?"

"I'm a Legilimens too," Maria said. "Most Aurors are. We have at least four or more who can do surface scans on the ship. We get them in here, and we get through all of them in a hurry. Those who want to stay, we put to work. Those who don't, we stun until we can Portkey them back."

Charlie looked back to Harry. "What do you think?"

"I think the only thing worse than forcing children to fight in a war is murdering them for it," he said intently.

Charlie, like Bill, knew exactly the depths of meaning to that statement. "You're right," he finally said. "It's a good plan. What can I do to help?"

"Go get the others, Maria," Harry told De La Rosa. "Charlie, you stun those that want to return to the planet."

With that, Harry walked back to the trembling, terrified Attan Freddell. "Attan, my name is Colonel Harry Potter with the Alliance to Restore the Republic. The Alliance has taken this ship. I am offering you a berth on the ship. If you accept, you'll be an enlisted soldier with the Alliance, and no one will ever ask you for favours like those ISB men again. Among my people, that is a terrible crime, and we won't tolerate it. What…"

"YES!" she screamed. She then blanched pale white and stuttered. "I mean, sorry, Colonel, sir. But yes, yes I'd like to join. Sir."

Harry did not even need to scan her. "Good choice, Shipman. Now, let's see where we put your uniform…"

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

Thirty-two of the conscripts wished to switch allegiance. Ten said they wanted to join the Alliance to begin with, but the Imperials got to them before they were able to reach an Alliance recruiter. The others simply had no allegiance either way—they never wanted to join any navy and were motivated purely by survival.

Though Harry hated to admit it, he was relieved not because of the moral choice of allowing them to live, but because the conscripts were all from engineering. The Empire, much like the Russian navy, believed in limited roles and training for certain personnel. A communications officer would be lost in engineering, while an engineering specialist wouldn't even know how to aim one of the heavy laser cannons on the hulls of the ship. Partly this was due to the incredibly detailed nature of each specialist position; and this also led to the need for huge crews. It was an intentional philosophy of the Empire, and from what Harry could glean, from the Republic before it.

Given the fact that only a handful of his crew could successfully perform the technomage spell, he was not about to turn down trained help in any position on the ship.

The fact that they got through them all in twenty minutes was itself a miracle. The rest of the prisoners they kept stunned and wrapped in a conjured rope/Portkey that would take them to the surface as soon as they were ready to escape. The next part of the mission was ready to begin.

They had the last converted, vetted conscript back to his station just as the ship currently in dock, a Carrack-class light cruiser, flew slowly and gracefully out of the U-shaped anchorage. When the repair yard signalled their new ship forward, the Imperiused captain responded with the appropriate codes, while Charlie Weasley personally handled the thruster controls using what information he gleaned from the neural interface for their old ship.

"Merlin's balls, I'm not sure if I'm doing this right!" he hissed to Harry.

The tension continued to rise until the repair yard signalled them. "Injunction, we have you in tractor beam range. Cut all engines."

With a sigh of relief, Charley cut back the thrust and the docking station brought them gently into the yard. The old Phoenix followed behind, stopping five thousand klicks away as if awaiting their turn. With a nod to the rest, Harry said, "Maria, you're with me. Everyone else, stay put, and stay in character. I'll signal with my credit chit when I'm ready."

Already, an army of droids and Wookiees in space suits were descending on the damaged gravity well projector like a swarm of gnats on the back of a large grey bull. Harry ignored them as Maria, dressed now as a lieutenant, walked beside the Imperiused captain toward the main airlock.

Harry chose De La Rosa simply because she had a military carriage. Her Basic was good enough after a day in the neural interface to pass as a provincial member of the Empire, but it was her confidence and carriage Harry was hoping would fool the Imperials.

The airlock opened to reveal a pair of Stormtroopers and a young, fresh-faced lieutenant. The young man snapped his heels and saluted sharply. "Captain Antrose, an honour."

The captain returned the salute. "Glad to be aboard, Lieutenant. I shall see the commander, now."

The lieutenant nodded, but said, "Unfortunately, Captain, Commander Sheddis is occupied by a member of the Inquisitorius. It's rather nerve-wracking as you might imagine. Instead, I was instructed to provide you refreshments and possibly a tour of the facility."

That was not what Harry wanted. He desperately needed to get to the command centre. Of course, he had no idea what the Inquisitorius was, but he wasn't going to let that ruin things for him. He wanted his stolen ship fully functional, and he wanted this station out of commission and the Wookiees freed when they left.

"Bad form, lieutenant," Captain Antrose said at Harry's mental prodding. "I don't mind waiting for the Inquisitorius, but Sheddis and I served together and I would be remiss not to pay my respects."

"You served together, sir?" The lieutenant blinked in obvious surprise. "I…I wasn't aware of that. I thought Commander Sheddis has always primarily served about stations such as this. Very well, if you don't mind waiting I'll take you to the command deck. This way, please?"

Though she could not possibly see him, Maria cast a wide-eyed glance at Harry as they started down the hall. The two Stormtroopers remained where they were by the airlock, while outside the army of slaves and droids had managed with the help of a massive gantry to lift the building-sized dome off the gravity well generator.

"Sir," the lieutenant said after a few minutes of walking, "if I may, when did you and Commander Sheddis serve together?"

"Imperio," Maria hissed. The young lieutenant stumbled before resuming walking without saying anything further.

"Potter, this is a bad idea," the Brazilian Auror whispered. "We don't know what this Inquisitorius is, but it doesn't sound good. And I hate this curse!"

"You cast it well enough. Besides, we can do this," Harry said. "Just stick to the plan. You have your Portkey, right?"

The two each carried an emergency Portkey tied to their general health. The lieutenant, now blessedly silent, led them out of the docking arm and into the central spire of the station. This section of the yard bustled with technicians and Stormtroopers. Harry looked but could not find any Wookiees, but that actually made sense. Slaves were always kept out of the main administrative areas of any Imperial facility.

The command deck when they reached it proved to be a long, low-ceilinged room lined with dozens of workstations, only a few of which were occupied at any one time. It might have been a cube-farm on Earth, since it had that utilitarian feel of a general workspace rather than a place of military readiness. Harry even spotted a few personal holos or the occasional plant in the various workstations, giving the feel of a place where people spent an inordinate amount of time in.

Across the long, narrow room Harry saw a well-lit office cordoned off by transparent walls. An Imperial officer sat stiffly behind a desk looking up at a figure Harry was at the wrong angle to see. He could see just from his body language that this Sheddis was very uncomfortable.

"We can wait here," the lieutenant said.

Harry moved over to De La Rosa. "I count thirty-two people," he whispered.

"Agreed."

"I'm going to cast a Notice-me-not and repelling charm at the far end of the room away from the commander's office. Let me know if that Inquisitorius person comes out. Remember, these people have their own types of wizards. One of them survived my Fiendfyre."

Harry drifted over to a stretch of empty cubes by the door and began casting Muggle-repelling and notice-me-not charms. He then took his credit chit and signalled the second team before stepping out of the way. Moments later the Portkey deposited twenty witches and wizards—all Brazilian—in the midst of an area the mainstream human Imperials could not see or even look at.

One by one, the former Quidditch players, Aurors and one magical, former television star disillusioned themselves and spread out over the command centre. "Potter!" Maria hissed.

Harry looked and saw a figure stepping out of Sheddis's office. The moment he emerged Harry realized they were in trouble. The man wore loose black slacks and a black blouse with a long, black, hooded robe over it all. With the hood pulled down, Harry could see the man was human, with his hair shaved on the sides and pulled back in a Mohawk tied at the back of his skull. His eyes, though, moved from one disillusioned witch and wizard to another without missing a beat. Either he could see through the magic, or somehow sensed them otherwise.

Then his eyes moved to Harry and widened a split second before he lit a glowing red blade just like Vader's. "Now!" Harry shouted.

The twenty volunteers began stunning the Imperials at their various stations fast enough to hopefully prevent any alarm, while Harry rushed forward toward the man with the red laser sword. If this creature was anything like Vader, then he would move faster than a werewolf and be stronger still. So, seconds before they met, Harry Apparated behind him and lashed out with a silent cardiac curse.

The man somehow stopped, somersaulted, and batted the curse right back at Harry in one fluid, impossible motion. Harry managed to side-step his deflected curse and was only dimly aware of the sickly-purple magic striking Sheddis in the chest behind him.

Maria, trying her best, cast a blasting curse at the man's back. He spun away from the curse as if somehow he knew it was coming, and with a wave of his hand somehow summoned her toward him. Desperately, Harry did the same thing, casting a silent accio at the Auror, managing to pull her sufficiently far to one side that the blade which would have taken her head instead took her left arm at the elbow. She gave one startled scream of pain before her Portkey whirled her away.

In a bid to buy his strike team time, Harry rushed to engage the Inquisitor again. He conjured a swarm of wasps that the man easily blasted them away with a flick of his hand and a wall of kinetic power. "Show yourself, Magician," the Inquisitor said. "I can sense your presence like a star in the Force. You cannot hide from me. But I would see your face before you die."

Magician. This man knew who Harry was. With no more reason not to, since it was apparent the cloak had finally met its match, Harry let himself appear before the Inquisitor. "Hi," he said with false cheer. "How's old Vader doing?"

"Lord Vader has warned us about you," the man said as he rushed forward with terrifying speed.

If Harry were any other man, he'd have panicked at the terrifying sight. But he was the Man Who Conquered, Auror Captain and Mage General. He was the Master of Death. So instead of panicking, he clamped down on the fear and reacted by instinct. He conjured ice all over the floor and then Apparated behind the startled Inquisitor. Despite the sudden shift of his footing, the Inquisitor proved too good to fall. Instead, he gathered his own considerable magic and banished himself into the air after Harry in his new location. Harry conjured a flight of arrows and banished them toward the man, who simply cut them away with casual flicks of his sword.

The Inquisitor then struck with his own magic directly at Harry. A storm of blue lightning filled the room. Harry raised his shield and intercepted it, but it felt as if his Protego charm was being hit by a whole army of Reductos. The sheer power behind it pushed Harry back half a foot just from the kinetic energy transmitted through his magic.

Before he even had time to recover, the red sword was flying toward his face. Harry banished his attacker, but somehow the Inquisitor deflected the kinetic energy back and sent Harry flying. He stumbled into a cube, stunned at the deflection of his magic, and barely managed to Apparate away again before the laser sword cut him in half.

"We're clear!" one of the Brazilians shouted.

"Then get the hell out of here!" Harry screamed. Since they all knew their destination, the Brazilians were able to Disapparate rather than Portkey, and disappeared with a series of pops. Harry, meanwhile, ran down toward the large row of windows that overlooked the ship currently being repaired. His plan—everything they were trying to accomplish—would fail if he couldn't find a way to deal with this space wizard.

Despite what he had to do, he also knew the wizard definitely was a better fighter. For all Harry's years of experience and skill, he simply could not move as fast as this Inquisitor moved. And so he did what he did best. With waves of his hand and the knowledge that his team was away, Harry delved into magic he had not used in years.

Desks transformed into beasts of all description. Lethal curses flew as fast as Harry could cast them, from blood boilers to killing curses, while the deck plates underneath the man transformed into patches of quicksand. It was a flurry of magic that would have made even Dumbledore and Voldemort back away.

Despite the urgency of the situation, and the growing panic that threatened to overwhelm his best control, Harry couldn't help but admire the grace with which his enemy overcame the magic. The laser sword deflected Harry's curses like a bat popping away cricket balls, while he flowed like a zero-gravity ballerina around the various magical traps. When a magical beast got too close he lopped off its head with a wipe of the lethal sword. When Harry tried to summon or destroy the blade itself, the man defeated the summoning and moved so that the destructive curses never struck their intended target.

And all the while he closed on Harry with dark, burning eyes and an aura of malevolent intent. He wondered if Vader would have been as deadly if not for the Fiendfyre. But Harry could not afford to use Fiendfyre, not unless he was willing to murder the Wookiees he had come to save. The Fiendfyre would burn right through the station walls and expose all within to the vacuum of space…

"You cannot beat me," the man growled as he leaped forward like a pouncing tiger. "I am more powerful than you can possibly imagine. The Dark Side is with me, and when…"

"Would you just shut the fuck up" Harry growled, a moment before he vanished one of the windows.

The Inquisitor's eyes bulged in disbelief a second before the vacuum sucked him and the other unconscious Imperials into the deadly vacuum of space. Harry restored the vanished window ten seconds later and struggled to breathe as the room's air scrubbers filled in the vacuum. Magical exhaustion brought him to his knees as he continued gasping at the thin air.

"Bugger me," he muttered.

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Author's Note: Once again I just wish to stress just how much I appreciate Teufel1987, JR and Miles for beta reading yet another of my stories. As always, they make everything better.