A Galaxy of Magic

Chapter 24

Shaak Ti woke to a dull ache in her thighs and the slow, familiar sway of the bed beneath her. For a moment, she thought it was a passing tremor from the planet’s crust, but when she opened her eyes, she saw the real cause. Aayla was on all fours at the foot of the mattress, her blue skin flushed several shades deeper. Her fingers were knotted tight in the bedspread as Harry drilled her from behind. The sound of wet flesh and the sharp gasp of Aayla’s breath made Shaak Ti’s montrals tingle.

She watched for a moment, her mind hazy and her body unwilling to move. Maris, curled up on the other side, shifted under the covers. She peeked one bright eye open, blinked, and yawned with such innocent cuteness that Shaak Ti almost laughed aloud. Maris looked from Harry and Aayla to Shaak Ti, then yawned again as she stretched.

Aayla’s ass moved in time with Harry’s hips, and each clap of her cheeks echoed in the small bedroom. Her lekku thumped against her back, her eyes rolled up, and she let out a strangled gasp as Harry hit some very sensitive spot deep within her squelching pussy. Maris propped herself up on an elbow and smirked, her eyes lingering on where Harry’s cock stretched Aayla’s pussy wide. “You started without us,” Maris said in a raspy voice. She licked her lips, and her eyes were hungry.

Aayla managed to look over her shoulder and shot Maris a half-lidded smile. “I could hardly wait,” she said, then let out a shuddering moan as Harry picked up his pace. “Besides, someone had to get things going. We’re on a schedule, aren’t we?” Her voice broke on the last word, dissolving into another gasp as Harry grabbed her hips and slammed even deeper.

Shaak Ti rolled her eyes, but she felt a sharp surge of heat between her own legs. She let her head flop back on the pillow, but she couldn’t ignore Maris’s foot nudging against her ankle, or the sound of Aayla’s mounting pleasure. The whole tent seemed to vibrate with the force of Harry’s thrusts.

Maris grinned and crawled over to Shaak Ti, her pussy still sensitive from the night before. “We might as well enjoy the show,” she tiredly said, and pressed a soft, teasing kiss to Shaak Ti’s jaw. Shaak Ti let herself relax, and her heart rate picked up as Maris’s hand skated down her belly and began to draw careful circles over her clit.

The bedsprings squealed in protest as Harry grunted, his hands roughly gripping the thick flesh of Aayla’s hips. He locked eyes with Shaak Ti for a second. Shaak couldn’t help but smile back at his mischievous grin. He drove hard into Aayla with a bruising force, and Aayla’s body convulsed. Her lekku flopped around, her fingers gouged the mattress, and she screamed Harry’s name as she came hard.

Harry didn’t slow one bit. He kept moving, pulling Aayla upright so that her back pressed flush to his chest. His hands cupped her breasts, squeezing and kneading them until Aayla whimpered. Shaak Ti watched intently, her own breath ragged as Maris’s fingers sped up. Maris’s tongue lapped at Shaak Ti’s earlobe, sending sparks of pleasure down her spine.

Then Harry groaned and plunged one last time into Aayla, his cock throbbing as he spilled his seed inside her. He bit down gently on her shoulder, and his hips jerked with each spurt of cum. Aayla’s body shuddered, and she giggled deliriously, her head lolling back onto Harry’s shoulder. Shaak Ti shot her an accusing look, clearly jealous that Aayla had gotten to him first.

“I’m just trying to start the day off right,” Aayla panted, turning to kiss Harry fiercely. Semen dripped from between her legs, leaving a trail on her thighs as Harry finally pulled out.

Shaak Ti snorted and let her eyes flutter closed again, but Maris was already climbing over her, straddling her hips and rubbing her wet pussy against Shaak Ti’s thigh. “You’re just mad you didn’t get a proper wake-up call,” Maris teased. She reached down and cupped Shaak Ti’s breasts, rolling a nipple between her fingers.

Shaak Ti opened her mouth to retort, but Harry was already moving up the bed, his cock still hard and glistening with Aayla’s juices. Maris rolled off to give him some room. He knelt between Shaak Ti’s spread knees, leaned down, and kissed her deeply, his tongue tasting of Aayla’s pussy. One of his hands twined in Shaak Ti’s lekku, gently tugging. The other slid lower, and two fingers slipped into her tight hole, curling until Shaak Ti’s back arched off the bed.

Maris sat up and leaned in, her face close to Shaak Ti’s. They kissed slowly and passionately while Harry fingered Shaak Ti with ruthless expertise. Maris shuddered and ground herself against Shaak Ti, desperate for friction.

Aayla, meanwhile, lay sprawled at the foot of the bed, her body limp and her eyes glazed with bliss. She ran a hand down her stomach, then reached between her legs and scooped some of Harry’s cum from her pussy. She brought it to her mouth and sucked her fingers clean, her eyes never leaving the trio at the head of the bed.

Shaak Ti came with a low, deep moan, and her legs trembled as the orgasm rolled through her. Harry kissed her again, riding out her shudders, and only when she finally slumped back onto the pillow did he withdraw his fingers. Maris ground her clit against Shaak Ti’s thigh a few more times, then squealed as she came as well, collapsing against the older woman.

Aayla giggled, stretched languidly, and grinned at the others. “Now that’s a proper morning,” she said, scooting up to snuggle against Harry’s other side. Shaak Ti rolled her eyes and arched her back as Harry took her nipple into his mouth.

A Galaxy of Magic

He started with the basic protections. He added runes of stability, of strength, and of concealment. The cave was enormous. It was so much larger now, after the last round of terraforming. Harry walked the entire length of the wall and visited every pillar, because every load-bearing strut and every wall needed its own set of runes. He worked for hours, making sure every rune set was just right.

By the time he was finished, the first sun was well above the horizon, and the cave’s interior glowed with the hot, early-morning sun. Harry stepped back from the last wall and wiped the charred rock dust from his face. The engraver vibrated gently beside him, satisfied.

He walked out into the sun and found the group waiting for him by the ship. Aayla was on her datapad, creating a list of things that were needed to make the cave a proper base of operations. Shaak Ti stood next to her, tinkering with her lightsaber. Maris sat on the loading ramp, nibbling on a ration bar, while Yoda sat cross-legged on a crate. They watched as he emerged from the cave, his skin streaked with dust and sweat.

“Is it done?” Aayla called.

He nodded. “It’s as good as I can make it. It’ll take a Star Destroyer to bring down the cave.”

Maris stuffed her half-eaten bar into her pocket and stood up. “And how do we stop the sneaky kind of enemy?” she asked.

Harry held up the orb engraver and waggled it. “We add a much stronger protection.” He wiped his hands on his pants and turned to face Yoda, who was watching him with a curious look. “We need to do the hard part now. I’ll cast a spell that will hide the entire base from everyone … including the Empire.”

Yoda’s ears quivered. “Confident, you are, in this magic?”

“I’ve used this spell before,” Harry said, and the others chuckled. “Anything short of outright betrayal, we’ll be safe.”

He explained the concept of the Fidelius Charm in simple terms that non-magical people could understand. He described the idea of a Secret Keeper and explained that the knowledge of the cave’s location would be trapped in the soul of a single person, unfindable by anyone else, unless that person chose to share the secret. He explained how the magic would physically warp reality, so that the entrance would become invisible, even to those who had just watched it being built. Only the Secret Keeper could reveal it, and only by telling them the location.

Maris raised an eyebrow. “So if, say, the Secret Keeper decided to tell the entire planet where we were, we’d be screwed?”

Harry nodded. “That’s why you pick your Secret Keeper carefully. Once the spell is done, even I wouldn’t be able to find the cave unless he told me where it was.”

Shaak Ti stepped forward, her expression serious. “So, who should be the Secret Keeper?”

They all talked it over and came to the conclusion that Yoda would be the best choice. Harry and the girls may have to leave the planet on occasion for missions, and Yoda would be very safe and secure inside the cave.

Yoda’s eyes twinkled with delight, but his tone was grave. “Responsibility, this is. Heavy, it weighs.”

“Ready?” Harry asked.

The group nodded, and Yoda closed his eyes in concentration.

Harry positioned himself in front of the cave’s mouth. He held out his hand and exhaled slowly. He began incanting a series of words in an ancient tongue, punctuated by precise flicks of his fingers. The energy built quickly, and the air around him shimmered as if he were underwater. The cave itself began to hum, and a deep vibration could be felt in their bones.

Aayla and Shaak Ti stood at attention, hands on their lightsabers. Maris edged closer to Yoda, licking her lips as if the pressure in the air dried them out. Yoda sat very, very still.

The ritual took longer than Harry expected. After the first ten minutes, his arms were shaking, and sweat poured down his face, but he didn’t let up. The magic was complex. It tried to resist and snap back like a stretched rubber band, unraveling the runes he’d just spent hours carving. Harry leaned into the pain and the strain, letting his determination feed the power.

Finally, he reached the last step. He aimed his finger at Yoda. A bolt of blue light shot from the tip, striking Yoda’s chest and sinking in without a sound. Yoda’s eyes widened, he exhaled, and the effect rippled out.

The cave’s massive entrance, wide enough to fly a gunship through, began to dissolve. The rock on either side slid together as if it had always been a solid cliff. The air filled with a deep, resonant note, and when it faded, there was nothing left but a blank wall of nondescript stone.

Harry staggered back, dizzy. Aayla rushed forward to steady him. Maris blinked and looked around, confused.

“Why are we out here?” Maris asked.

Shaak Ti glanced at the blank rock wall, then back at Harry, her face full of confusion. “We were here to do something … weren’t we?”

Aayla let go of Harry and turned to Yoda. “Master, do you know what’s going on?”

Yoda nodded, his expression inscrutable. “Show you, I will.”

He raised a hand and pointed at the blank cliff. “The entrance, there is.”

Shaak Ti scowled skeptically. “There’s nothing there.”

Yoda smiled, understanding that he would need to explain in more detail. He turned to the others. “Listen well, you must. The secret of our hidden base is this. On Tatooine, the cave is. In the Northeast quadrant of the Western Dune Sea, under the three-fingered mesa, you will find it. Forty meters past the wind-carved arch, you will find the entrance.”

The moment he said it, the rock wall seemed to ripple. A narrow seam appeared, then expanded outward, revealing the familiar mouth of the cave and the gently glowing runes Harry had carved into the support beams. Aayla gaped, and Maris grinned and clapped her hands.

“Incredible,” Maris said. “I had completely forgotten it existed.”

Shaak Ti stepped up and touched the edge of the entrance as if to confirm it was real. “Can the effect be dispelled?” she asked.

Harry nodded his head. “It can be broken if you already know the secret, and you can do magic. Even so, it would be very difficult. However, if the Secret Keeper dies, then the secret dies with him, and the Charm will slowly break down over the years.”

Aayla glanced at Yoda. “So if you get captured …”

“Resist, I will,” Yoda said, his tone light but his eyes very serious.

Maris craned her head and peered at the cave’s threshold. “Can we go in now? I’m starving, and I’m sick of ration bars.”

Harry laughed, feeling the wave of post-spell exhaustion in his legs. “Yeah, we can go in now. We should probably fly the ship in before we get spotted.”

They all boarded the ship and flew into the cave. Aayla took it slow, and the ship fit through the entrance easily. She softly landed right in the middle of the wide, open space. Once landed, they all filed out.

Inside, the cave was unchanged. It was still a massive, empty cavern. The only difference was that their ship now sat parked in the middle. Aayla stood in the center of the main hall, looking up at the ceiling as if seeing it for the first time. Shaak Ti wandered to the far wall and inspected the engravings, running her palm over them with a look of admiration.

Harry slumped onto a bench and let his head fall into his hands. Yoda sat next to him. “Tired, you must be. Strong magic, it is.”

Harry nodded. “It was harder than I expected. The spell fights back. Especially when trying to hide something this big.”

Yoda chuckled. “The Force, and magic … different, yet alike. Both bend the world, but at a price.”

They sat in companionable silence while the others began making plans.

A Galaxy of Magic

“So what exactly are we looking for?” Harry asked. He stood just inside the newly finished cave, watching as the battered landspeeder slid off the ship’s loading ramp. His voice, the ramp’s groan, and the hiss of the speeder’s repulsors echoed throughout the cavernous cave. Outside the cave, the sand burned under the twin midday suns. In here, the stone was cool enough to make his skin goosebump.

“We need a power generator, lights, and cables … and that’s just to start with. We’ll need much more later,” Shaak Ti replied. She gripped the speeder’s steering yoke and backed it slowly down the ramp, her movements smooth and precise. The old YT-1300 squatted in the middle of the cavern, its hull still dusted with planetary grit. Shaak kept her eyes over her shoulder, using every inch of the ramp’s width as the speeder slid to the cave floor. She stopped it with a feather-light touch, then killed the repulsors. The vehicle settled with a gentle thump, right next to the utility crates they’d unloaded earlier.

Harry nodded, stepped up beside the landspeeder, and scanned the interior with a quick glance. Shaak Ti had already stashed a datapad on the dash, along with a half-rolled schematic of the cave’s new electrical grid. “Anything else before we go?”

Shaak tilted her head in thought. “We’ll need a specialized tool kit for the generator, and anything we can use to reinforce the supports. Maris was working on a list.”

As if summoned, Maris strolled out from the ship. “I have the list,” she called. “And I have demands. If I have to wire a kilometer of cables, I want gloves. Good gloves. Not the kind with holes in the fingers, either.”

Aayla followed her, spinning a pair of goggles on her finger. She stopped and flicked them at Maris, who caught them midair. “Let’s get going. I’d like to get back before sunset,” Aayla said to Shaak, climbing into the passenger seat. “Traveling through the desert at night is dangerous.”

Shaak Ti nodded, in complete agreement. She started up the landspeeder. Maris hopped into the back seat and looked at Harry. “Aren’t you coming?”

He shook his head. “I’ll take the speederbike,” he said, and walked up the ramp.

He liked the speederbike. It was the only thing here that handled like one of his old racing brooms. It was nothing fancy, but it was fast, and that was all Harry cared about. He slung one leg over, thumbed the ignition, twisted the handle, and let the vibration run up his thighs. The machine came alive with a low, angry hum. He turned it around and drove down the ramp, pulling up next to the waiting landspeeder.

Aayla looked at him, her chin resting on her fist. “Why not just ride with us?”

Harry shrugged with a smile. “I don’t get the chance to ride this thing that often. Don’t worry. I’ll follow close behind.”

Aayla rolled her eyes. “Are we ready?”

Harry checked his pockets, made sure he had plenty of coins, then nodded. He looked at the group, then at the cave entrance. The entrance appeared wide open to them, but he knew that the opening had been perfectly camouflaged by the Fidelius Charm. He said, “Do you know how to get to Mos Eisley?”

Shaak Ti nodded, her hands resting on the steering yoke. “We take the trail east past the salt flats. At Anchorhead, we turn north. That will keep us off the main roads until we’re close to the city.”

“Good,” Harry said. “Let’s get this show on the road.” Aayla nodded, then gestured for Shaak to go.

Shaak Ti started the repulsors and eased the landspeeder forward. The exhaust sent little dunes of dust rolling across the floor. Harry revved the repulsors and watched the girls pull ahead.

The cave mouth shimmered in the heat, and the rocks outside were blinding white. Shaak guided the landspeeder to the edge of the cave, stopped, and waited for Harry to catch up.

He pulled alongside, letting the heat settle into his back. “We’re not the only ones out here,” he said. “I counted at least three small huts in the valley when we flew over. It could be settlers, or it could be Jawas.”

“Jawas,” Maris groaned. “Great. If they try to strip the ship, I’m going to set them on fire.”

Aayla turned around and faced Maris. “Don’t. They’ll just come back in bigger numbers, and with more blasters. Scaring them away is good enough.”

“Are you worried about Jawas with blasters?” Maris asked.

“I’m worried about the neighbors they bring with them,” Aayla replied. “Out here, it’s not just Jawas. There are sand people, mercenaries, and a few things that aren’t so easy to explain.”

Harry smiled as the excitement began to build. The added danger really got his blood pumping. He gunned the bike and took point, gliding out of the cave mouth and onto the shelf of sandstone that overlooked the Dune Sea. He waited for the landspeeder to catch up, then took off along the trail.

The trail was an empty expanse rimmed with broken rock and low hills. The road was little more than ruts worn into the stone, but the bike chewed through it at twice the speed of the landspeeder. Every few hundred meters, Harry checked over his shoulder, just to make sure he wasn’t being tailed. The landspeeder kept its distance, but it was never more than a minute behind him. Harry suddenly had a strange feeling of being watched.

Out of nowhere, a blaster bolt came screaming at him. Already on edge, Harry saw it coming from a mile away. He swerved to the side, and the blaster shot whizzed past him. Another shot came from high on the ridge, and Harry was forced to speed up. The shot hit several meters behind him. When the third shot came, Harry saw exactly who was shooting at him.

He swiped his hand and used his magic to deflect the blaster shot. Harry then pointed his hand at a large boulder some distance away, high above the trail. Harry fired a Blasting Charm of his own, and the swirling light hit the boulder, exploding it into razor-like shards. Harry heard an agonized squeal, and he summoned whoever it was that had been shooting at him. A humanoid body came tumbling down the cliff and landed hard next to his speederbike.

Whatever it was, sure was ugly, Harry thought to himself as he looked down on it. It was still breathing, though it appeared to be in bad shape. It wore a baggy robe that blended in with the surrounding sandstone perfectly. The robe was shredded at the chest, and blood was seeping through. Its head was wrapped in some kind of dark gray material. There appeared to be goggles sticking out from its wrapped face, and metal spikes dotted its head.

He waited for the landspeeder to catch up. They idled together just off the main road, the dust settling around them. The girls looked down at the injured creature.

“Tusken Raider,” Shaak told him. “They aren’t pleasant to deal with.”

“There’s never just one,” Aayla said, scanning the cliffs.

“Agreed. They’ll want revenge for their fallen friend, so I suggest we leave,” Shaak stated. Aayla and Maris wholeheartedly agreed.

“Next stop, Mos Eisley,” Aayla called out. She shaded her eyes and looked east, where the air shimmered in the heat, and the white of the salt flats could be seen.

“You want to take the lead this time?” Harry offered. “I’ll hang back and keep an eye out.”

Shaak Ti nodded and gunned the repulsors. The landspeeder rolled ahead, trailing a plume of tan dust behind it. Harry watched the girls go, then checked the back trail one last time. When he was sure they weren’t being followed, he revved the engine and headed after them.

He felt good, in a strange way. For all the strangeness of the galaxy, this felt almost normal. He had a job to do, friends to watch his back, and a mission that actually mattered. It felt good to have a goal again.

He kicked the bike into high gear and chased the landspeeder up the ridge, heading east for Anchorhead and eventually, Mos Eisley.