Harry Potter and the Dark Lord of the Sith

Chapter 41.

"Well? Don't you have anything else to say?"

"I don't think we have anything to say to each other," Harry replied. "Except"--he ignited his lightsaber-- "this."

Voldemort made a move, and produced his own lightsaber. If it wasn't so serious--deadly serious, Harry reminded himself--he might have appreciated the irony of the situation. The Dark Lord, Voldemort, fashioned himself a weapon with a pure white blade.

Harry approached. "How did you get here?"

"You don't expect me to just give the answer away, do you?"

"No," Harry answered. "But I will get it." With that, he swung his lightsaber.

Voldemort blocked and counterattacked, forcing Harry to step back and parry. They stood facing each other, blades raised.

"Surely you can do better, Potter, I wouldn't want my task to be too easy." The dark lord lunged ahead. Harry struck his blade, pushed on it, and turned it aside. Then he attacked, swinging at Voldemort's head. Instead of blocking, Voldemort tried a low swing at Harry's legs. Harry jumped over the white blade, parried the next blow, and somersaulted backwards, landing into a ready stance.

"I find that hard to believe--you always take the easy way out."

"Oh, Potter. I am so disappointed. Parroting Dumbledore? Your hero? Your dead hero?"

"Argh!" Harry yelled, striking Voldemort, driving him backwards. "Who are your heroes, Voldemort?"

"I don't need any. That's what makes me strong."

"You don't have any, you mean," Harry said as he struck another blow at Voldemort's blade. "That makes you weak... Tom."

"How dare you!" Voldemort attacked in blind fury, and Harry knew he had thrown out the deadliest possible insult at his enemy--he called him by his Muggle name.

Harry tried to Force-push Voldemort into a wall, but instead, the dark lord just did a slight stumble before regaining his composure and his calm."

"You presume to judge our relative strengths and weaknesses?"

"Why not? You were a fully trained wizard, and you couldn't kill me when I was a baby."

"Do you know why, Potter? Can you explain? Can you replicate it?"

"I know why," Harry said as he approached Voldemort, who was now standing on the staircase. Harry moved up one step.

"Ah, yes. Love," Voldemort mocked. "Do you still believe love will save you?"

"Yes," Harry whispered. And he believed it. Despite everything, he believed it.

He attacked again, running up the stairway. Voldemort blocked and then moved out of the way. Harry barely ducked a heavy cable swinging towards him. He cut it in half, but Voldemort used the time to hit him off-balance and sent Harry tumbling down.

Before Voldemort could jump at him, Harry summoned all the Force energy he could and leaped all the way to the ceiling. Grabbing at a bar, he swung forward, spun around, and landed at the top of the stairs. Summoning his lightsaber, he ignited it in mid-air, forcing Voldemort to duck the amethyst blade. He positioned himself, ready, with a snarling Voldemort several feet below.

Voldemort leaped up to be level with him, and swung, but Harry blocked it. He moved backwards, defending from Voldemort's strikes.

He heard a swoosh of a door opening behind him, and felt and heard the blow of a strong wind. They stepped out. Harry gave a quick glance backwards and realized they were on a narrow--about five feet wide--walkway between two buildings. He didn't look down, but he felt that there were miles of space there. A fall meant certain death...

"Potter!" Voldemort called out. "Notice something strange?"

Strange? Harry thought as he took another look backwards. Well, there is still about a hundred feet to the other end of the walkway, so I can't see that clearly... and Voldemort is thirty feet behind me...

Voldemort is thirty feet behind me. He didn't follow... which means...

The walkway exploded.

XXX

"Well, that should do it," Ron said, closing the engine compartment. "We won't know for sure till we launch it, mind you, but I'm willing to risk that."

"Right. Can't wait to get away from this planet." Jan put away her tools. "So, what do we name her?"

"Huh?"

"It's a ship. It should have a name."

"You build it--mostly. You name her."

"No, you should. I never was good with that kind of stuff."

Ron thought for a moment, and then an idea came to him. "Padfoot," he suggested, using Sirius Black's nickname.

Jan nodded. "I like it, although--the name means something to you?"

"Yes. I'll tell you later."

"Right. I'll start the launch."

Ron nodded, and, as Jan entered the craft, headed to the end of the chamber. There, he pressed a button to open a part of the wall to reveal the sky outside.

It was late evening, the sun having set, Ron estimated, about an hour before. The air was chilly, but Ron's shivering had nothing to do with the cold. Despite his air of confidence--as much for Jan's sake as for his own, despite being certain they'd done everything they could, they were still about to try to fly away from the capital world of the Empire in a craft composed of parts that weren't meant to go together--something their efforts couldn't negate.

"Hey!" Jan's voice interrupted him. "You alive?"

"What? Oh, yeah," he ran back. "Sorry."

He climbed into the craft and took the controls. There were two flight yokes in the craft, so he looked over at Jan with a questioning glance.

"You want to fly, or should I?"

"You handle it. I'll talk to Coruscant--Imperial Center--Control."

Ron nodded. "As you wish." Switching the control to his yoke, he activated the repulsorlifts and took the craft up. Before firing the forward engines, he leaned across the cockpit and gave Jan a kiss.

"Here goes nothing," he said.

To Ron's surprise, the craft flew well for its configuration. The flight was rough until Ron got the handling, but then it smoothed out. There was no sign of dangerous vibration,

either. He wasn't stupid enough to think it could match a well designed craft whose parts were constructed to fit each other, but then, he wasn't taking it into a dogfight.

"Unidentified craft, this is Imperial Center Traffic Control. Identify yourself and state your destination," a boring, monotonous voice came through the intercom.

"Imperial Center Control, this is private vessel Padfoot. Requesting orbital exit corridor."

"Private vessel Padfoot, follow your present course."

"Affirmative," Jan said.

"Something wrong?"

"No--it was a droid voice, you noticed?"

"If you say so."

"That's what I counted on. With all the traffic on Coruscant, only vessels deemed important would have an actual person directing them."

"Who decides what vessel is important?"

"Well... either the owner of the vessel is some bigwig--maybe a member of the Imperial court--or..."

"Or what?"

"Or the military decides there's a good chance there are rebels on board."

"Private vessel Padfoot, lower your shields for a security scan."

"Do it," Jan told him. Ron complied.

Two small hovering droids flew around the Padfoot. Don't worry," Jan said. "They're looking for contraband. "Weapons, explosives, that sort of thing. And also," she added after a moment's thought, "if we have more people aboard than we should--and if we're human."

"Why that? I mean, I know about the Imperial policies, but there are plenty of non-humans on Coruscant--"

"You and I spend most of our time in the Outer Rim, where a human and an alien working together is hardly unusual. But the Imperial discrimination is a product of attitudes that have been present among core world humans for a long time. Even before Palpatine, it's been at least a century since the Republic had a non-human Chancellor."

"So a human and a non-human cooperating on Coruscant means..."

"It means nothing. But the Empire thinks it means we're either Rebels, Outer Rim riffraff, or an underworld street gang that managed to get their hands on a ship. Not good whatever way."

"Private vessel Padfoot," the droid controller said. "You are cleared for orbital exit corridor Alpha-K-Seventeen."

"Acknowledged," Jan said. "We're okay."

Ron glanced at the sensor display, and turned towards the corridor Control gave.

"Ron, watch out!" Jan shouted, but he already noticed the danger, and reactivated the shields. The small object smashed into them, and fell down, getting stuck somewhere on the front of their craft.

"This isn't good," Ron said. "That thing might fall where it doesn't belong."

"So what do we do? Climb out and get it?"

"No need," Ron said, drawing his wand. With a single wave, the small, rod-shaped object appeared in mid-air in front of them. Ron grabbed it before it fell to the floor.