Chapter Thirty-Four: In the Shadow of the Executor

Star Wars + Harry Potter Crossover

A/N: Review Responses are available in my forums as normal. And now, "It's a trap!"

Chapter Thirty-Four: In the Shadow of the Executor

Harry had never, in his life, Apparated out of a vehicle going beyond the speed of sound. In fact, there were lots of things he'd never done, such as a threesome, eating Nutella, or playing tennis. Some of those he regretted not doing, but he did not regret having neglected to Apparate out of a vehicle at high speed.

Mass and momentum are retained in the act of Apparition. If you're running when you Disapparate, you will be moving forward when you reappear. If you are in a vehicle traveling at nearly 1,500 meters per second when you Disapparate, the air will feel like a brick wall slamming into you when you reappear.

It felt just like a wall—the shock of the impact of air at that velocity slowed him immediately while beating him senseless. There was no way he could have held on to his broom, much less even retained consciousness, with such a shock.

And then the shield generator exploded. Harry was only dimly aware of falling when the shockwave of the explosion hit him like a kick that complimented the slap of his Apparating out, and he found himself tumbling hopelessly within sight of his broom. He couldn't even remember the flying spell, much less a cushioning charm.

He knew that there was every possibility that he would die from such a fall, despite The Hallows. If he survived, then at the very least he was going to hurt like holy hell. Accio broom!

He desperately spun around during his fall, looking for his broom, when it came slamming into the back of his head.

"Shite!" The word was ripped from his lips as he spun, grabbed the uncooperative broom, and started to pull up hard…only to slam into and then through some type of rickety wooden platform. And then another, before landing with the crack of broken bones and torn ligaments on an uncomfortably hard surface. "Ouch!" he moaned.

The air around him came alive with small, chattering voices that spoke a stream of high-pitched gibberish. For a moment he thought he was surrounded by an army of munchkins on speed until he forced his eyes open and saw it was even worse.

He was surrounded by teddy bears with spears. Harry shunted the pain aside through sheer force of will combined with a determination not to be eaten by a band of carnivorous teddy bears. He opened himself to the Force and let it fill his tattered magical core, and with the infusion of energy his unique magic went to work. With effort he straightened his legs out, ignoring the crack of bones and spikes of pain, and let the magic wash over his many hurts. After a few minutes of being poked and prodded by the teddy bears, Harry sat up with a groan.

The little bear-thingies jumped back; the tallest barely topped Harry's head even while sitting down. With this new angle he was better able to glimpse the village of the bears, which appeared to be a tree house. He looked back at the stubby little hands on the teddy bears and wondered how the hell they could have ever built anything like this, much less even climbed a tree in the first place. Howls, clicks and high-pitched screams alerted Harry to new arrivals. He looked up just in time to see Leia swooping down toward him.

"Harry, are you okay?"

"I'm getting there. Watch out, I think they bite."

Only, they weren't biting. The startled bears had seen her flying on the broom and now backed away to bow to her as if to a god.

"Of course, they bow to you," Harry muttered. "It must be a princess thing."

Leia didn't laugh, though she smiled. "I felt your pain."

"We wield The Hallows—if we survive, we'll heal very fast. Anyone hurt in the explosion?"

"No. But there is something you need to see, Harry."

He pulled his broom, only to snort in disgust. What he held wasn't a broom, just one portion of the shaft. The rest never survived impact. "Damn, I liked that broom."

"Can this one carry us both?"

Harry sighed. "No need. I can just fly, now that my brain is working."

"Like we did back on Avalon?" Leia stared, wide-eyed.

"Exactly. Come on, let's go."

If the bear-thingies were excited about Leia on a broom stick, they when absolutely nuts when Harry simply lifted off on his own power. The two floated through the trees toward the sky overhead. They emerged from the tree tops into a brilliant sky dominated by the gas giant of Endor and a line of on-coming clouds.

It took almost half a minute before Harry realized what was missing. "Where's the Death Star?" he asked.

"That's just it, Harry," Leia said with a worried expression. "It was never there. The shield generator wasn't that at all—it was a giant holographic projector. The fleet is going to appear in less than an hour and head right into a trap."

"But where's the Death Star?" Harry asked again. "Mon's intelligence was rock solid—they built one of the superlaser components, and the movement of personnel was established. They built something, so where is it?"

"I don't know."

They quickly returned to camp, only to find the unit ready to move out. "Stormtroopers and assault droids are moving in," Schmidt reported tersely. "Are you well, General?"

"Fine," Harry said with a negligent wave of his hand. "Throw me one of the spare brooms. We need to get out of here and warn the fleet."

"Are we going to gun it this time, sir?" Guerin asked.

"This time, yes," Harry said.

In seconds they packed their camp using a chorus of wands, and soon were flying through the trees. The first sign that their notice-me-not charms had lost effectiveness was the rain of red blaster fire that took out the two lead flyers.

A whole battalion of Imperial biker scouts closed in from around the trees toward them, a hundred or more strong. Harry spun on his broom and began conjuring glass walls between the various trees.

The sound of shattering glass was always followed by the explosion of a downed biker. Even so, two more broom riders fell. "We're not going to make it, there are just too many of them!" Luke shouted over the wind of their passage. "You go, I'll distract them."

"Luke? What?" Leia asked.

Luke, however, pulled sharply back on his broomstick, and then insanely enough jumped off it entirely. Through a feat of timing Harry couldn't have done even with the Force, the Jedi landed perfectly on one of the bikes and kicked the hapless scout off. With one hand controlling the bike and the other wielding his green lightsaber, the Jedi waded into battle, disrupting the entire Imperial formation.

"We can't just leave him!" Leia screamed.

"Leia, he was going to stay anyway!" Harry shouted back. "Your father's here, in orbit, remember? Luke always planned to face him. Let him go! If anyone can make it out, it'll be him."

"But…"

"We'll leave his X-wing, he'll be fine!" Harry shouted again.

She looked on the verge of mutiny, but at least stopped arguing. They reached the assault shuttle and took stock. "Where's Guerin, was he hit?" Harry demanded.

Schmidt also looked around, before casting a location charm on the boy's tracer. "He's alive. Looks like he stayed back with Commander Skywalker, sir."

"Bloody hell," Harry muttered. "Fine, we'll come back for him too. Levitate Skywalker's x-wing out and then we're leaving!"

When the X-wing was out and disillusioned—a charm that Jedi could see through easily—they loaded back into the assault shuttle and lifted off. Though the Death Star was not visible in the sky, Vader's fleet was. The ships hung like silver spears rising up over the horizon.

Harry settled into the pilot's seat with Leia in the Co-pilot's seat. Harry paused in prepping the ship for take-off long enough to say, "Leia, the Force was with him. He'll be okay."

Biting her lip, she said, "I know. Can we use the mirror?"

Harry grimaced as he removed the shards of what had once been a charmed mirror. "You mean this? Didn't survive my fall."

"Fine, we do it the hard way."

"And that is?"

Leia sighed. "I'm not sure. We can't contact the fleet while they're in route, so we have to wait until they decant from hyperspace."

Harry piloted the shuttle up from the trees and saw that the forest skies were buzzing with hundreds of TIE-fighters. "This whole thing was a trap," Harry said bitterly. "Damn him. Merlin curse his bones!"

As the shuttle started into the upper atmosphere, Harry noticed the fleet of ships converging on their position. The normal star destroyers were there, along with Vader's massive ship. But for the first time he noticed something else hidden in the shadow of the Executor.

"What is that?" Harry said.

Leia leaned over the control board, looking through data bases. "I don't know," she said in worry. "But it's big—it's almost as long as the Executor, but looks like it bulks much more. Harry…" She sat up, alarmed. "Harry, it's firing something!"

The massive, machete-shaped ship was firing something, but it was not a laser cannon or even a super laser. Rather, it fired what from a distance looked like a blue disc of light. However, the disk closed on their position with terrifying speed and grew larger and larger as it did so.

Harry punched the shuttle's engines to maximum, but somehow knew it would not be enough. As the disk grew even closer he saw energy boiling within it, with flashes of plasma like lightning forming spokes from the centre to the outer ring. It hit the shuttle.

Oh shit, it hit the shuttle! Harry's thoughts raged frantically. A shuttle under Fidelius!

The ion pulse cannon blast ripped away not just the assault shuttle's electrical systems, but the magic itself. It felt as if Harry's body was burning, and from beside and behind him he heard Leia and his crew crying out in pain as well.

With a sense of horror that overrode the terror that he would ordinarily feel being at the helm of a powerless shuttle plummeting back to the planet's atmosphere, he realized the Empire had finally found a way to disable a Fidelius charm. Avalon wasn't safe, not any more.

"Harry, we're falling!" Leia screamed.

"Schmidt!" Harry cried over his shoulder. "Everyone, grab your brooms and Apparate out now before we get moving too fast! Get back to the surface!"

The sound of desperate cracks momentarily drowned out the sound of groaning metal. Harry reached out a hand. Leia, no longer shouting, met his eyes and took the proffered hand in her own.

They Apparated out and appeared moments later in mid-air, falling at the same rate as the ship. Harry pulled hard on his raw-feeling magic and slowed their descent into the trees until they came to a halt with nary a bend of the knees.

Leia, crushed up against him with her face buried in his chest, said, "Let's not do that again."

He kissed her and then sent out a Patronus messenger. "We need to find the rest of our men."

"Harry that weapon…"

"I can't think about that right now," Harry admitted with a note of desperation. "One step at a time. We need to find our people, and then we need to figure out a way to get off this planet to warn the fleet, and then we…"

"Freeze!"

"That's a start," Harry said, a moment before he blasted the biker trooper against a tree. The man's partner managed to get off two shots which Leia deflected easily with her lightsaber before Harry stunned the man.

A simple switching spell had the scout armour off the men and onto Harry and Leia, and their own gear on the troopers. Harry stripped off his potions box and any other magical items, while Leia reclaimed her lightsaber. When that was done he leaned over the stunned man, lifted his eye lids, and plunged into his brain.

When he was done extracting the information he needed, he pulled the blaster pistol the troopers used and shot each man in the head. Leia stared, wide-eyed.

"We can't afford to have them wake up and alert Imperial forces," he explained grimly. "There's no truly secure way to hold them prisoner, and I'm not going to risk your life trying."

Leia was a compassionate and kind woman, but thank Merlin she was smart as well. "You're right. Do you know how to ride one of these speeder bikes?"

"I'll figure it out."

"Where are we going?"

"The command bunker. Luke's X-wing is locked to his biometrics. We might be able to find transport off the planet there."

"Right, let's go."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

Harry grimaced when he and Leia caught up to what remained of his command. Of the forty-nine witches and wizards who accompanied him to the planet, only twenty-two survived the ambush, and of those five were seriously injured. Luke and Guerin were not among them.

Though Harry and Leia both wore the biker scout armour, they removed their helmets so Schmidt could see they were friendlies. "General," the former Auror said grimly. "What's the plan?"

"Figure out a way to get off this rock," Harry said. Leia, meanwhile, was already moving among the mages, using her own battle-field medic training to help where she could. Schmidt watched her for a moment before looking back at Harry. "That weapon—it was designed for us, wasn't it?"

"That's what I'm thinking. Enough hits from that, it might be able to rip the Fidelius charm right off the planet."

"Then we will stop it, no?" Schmidt said.

"Damned right. De La Rosa owes me a garden."

Leia made her way back to them. "We have half an hour until the fleet arrives."

"Then let's get moving," Harry said. "Even if we can't make it into orbit, we might at least be able to make a broadcast to warn the fleet."

Unfortunately, movement was hampered by the fact that many of their brooms were damaged while Apparating out of the damaged shuttle. The other mages found it no easier Apparating out of a ship at extreme speed and altitude than Harry did. Really, it was a miracle as many survived as they did. But it meant that many brooms were damaged, leaving only ten among them.

They used the brooms to help transport the wounded and made a single-file march toward where their spells said the bunker was. This time they did not hesitate to disillusion themselves, using conjured rope to stay together. Unfortunately, without brooms, it was slow-going through the forest floor.

Too slow.

Harry slogged ahead, using magic to ease a trail, when he felt Leia suddenly grasp his arm. "Harry, they're here! It's too late!"

Leaving the main column behind, Harry and Leia both ran out into a clearing they had been skirting for the past few minutes and looked up into the sky. The sun was far to the west, almost setting, while the gas giant Endor cast a purplish haze over the twilight sky. Against this backdrop, Harry watched as a swarm of barely visible lights—ship hulls reflecting the sunlight—swam into the sky.

"Merlin help them," Harry whispered.

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

Admiral Gial Ackbar spent almost nineteen years as a slave to Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin after his home world of Dac fell. During that time, he not only served Tarkin, he learned of the man's tactics. And since Tarkin helped shape Imperial doctrine, he thus learned about general Imperial tactics.

The moment Home One decanted from hyperspace to see an empty field of stars where the Death Star was supposed to be, and a massive fleet of Imperial warships on their flank, he knew what was happening. "It's a trap," he said with resigned calm. "All fighters providing screening fire on the enemy fleet. Are we detecting mass shadows yet?"

"Yes, admiral," the tactical officer said.

Ackbar nodded. "All ships, this is the admiral. Attack is a no-go. Break formation and make your escape as best you can. Monitor gold channels for rendezvous coordinates."

One of their new generals piped in. "Admiral, we're not going to get another chance at this."

"General Solo, this is a trap. If we stay, we won't get another chance at anything," Ackbar said.

The former smuggler said, "Acknowledged. What about our people on the ground? I still have an invisible ship."

The admiral took only a moment to consider it. "General, if you feel you can rescue our landing party, then you have my blessing and thanks in trying."

Before Ackbar could say any more, tactical shouted, "Admiral, incoming fire! I've never seen anything like it!"

Ackbar spun his command chair and blinked his amphibious eyes in amazement. "I have," he said softly. "During the Clone Wars. Force preserve us! All ships, the Empire has an ion pulse cannon. Break away, break …."

The pulse cannon struck, gouging a deep path through the already breaking rebel fleet formation. It did not cause ships to explode—it did much worse. Whole destroyers were instantly rendered inert, losing all shields, life support—even gravity plating. As the damaged ships floated dead in space, the Imperial jackals moved in for the kill.

"Admiral, what do we do?" one of his people shouted.

Ackbar saw the imperial frigate closing in and sighed sadly. "We face our end bravely, my friends. It has been an honour."

~~Revenge~~

~~Revenge~~

"Home One is down," a frantic voice shouted over the command channel.

Another said, "Liberty too. Who the hell is in command?"

"Silence all channels," an authoritative voice said. "This is Madine. All ships are to continue to break and evade as best as you can. Rendezvous coordinates will be sent on Gold Channel 89-765 in one hour's time. Do not engage!"

Han Solo looked down at the com speaker with a grimace before glancing up at his co-pilot, Colonel Bria Theran. "This whole operation was one big pile of Bantha poodoo."

"Potter's people are still down there," Bria pointed out. "There's no shield, so they must have made it down. Do we go, or bug out with the rest of the fleet?"

The Millennium Falcon had already separated enough from the battle that Han could see the Imperial pincer movements as various elements of their fleet converged on the devastated ships of the Alliance. He counted at least a dozen of the rebel's biggest ships knocked out, including Home One, and already they were being either boarded for prisoners, or destroyed outright. And just barely visible in the dimming light of a setting sun, Han could make out the behemoth that mounted the ion pulse cannon.

"That's a big ship," he said aloud.

"Han?"

Han looked back to a woman he'd never thought he'd see again, much less have back in his life again. "Potter did me a solid when he did his mojo on the Falcon. I can say it turned my life around. I was able to get jobs, pay back my debt, and brought me back to you. I say we at least give it a try. We'll insert over one of the poles and use the emergency transponder to try and find them."

Brie leaned over and kissed his cheek. "You're the general."

"Yeah, I guess I am," Han said with a devil-may-care grin. "Let's go save some wizards!"

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Author's Note: As always, 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.