Synopsis
A Harry Potter cursed with immortality must not only survive the ravaging of Earth by monsters far more powerful than any humanity has encountered, but he must rise to save it, and in the process exact one wizard's revenge against the Galactic Empire.
Excerpt
Chapter One: Living in Despayre
"Tell us the story again, Daddy!" Lily asked.
Slave Terran-2448DZ opened his eyes as the grating claxon rang through the hot, stuffy air. The first thing he saw, just like every other morning of his enslavement, was the crisscrossed metal bars supporting the cot directly above him. Already a pair of heavily calloused feet was swinging over the side in response to the bitter wake-up call. When he also sat up, he glanced across the length of the cavernous metal room at twenty rows of cots stacked twenty levels high and twenty cots deep. In all them, other people were waking up. They were all naked—the room was filled with a sea of stacked flesh comprised of eight thousand people who once had hope, but now had nothing—not even the dignity of clothing.
When he stood, he could feel the whole structure vibrating under the combined weight of so many people all moving at once. The woman in front of him avoided his gaze and instead looked down at her feet, as nude as he was. She was the fourth to inhabit the cot next to him in the months since they'd been there; all the others died either of disease, accident or execution. She was perhaps nineteen or twenty and thin, with a pinched, stressed face. Her lank hair had been cut short, like the rest of them.
Unlike the others, Slave Terran-2448DZ's hair grew back the very next day every time until it was the previous length, and then stopped growing. However, there were too many other slaves for their masters to care about that one strange aberration. It was a long wait, staring at the poor girl's bare backside, while ahead of them the other slaves started climbing down the stairs.
The moment they reached the ground level, their overseers force-marched them into two groups—men in one and women in the other, to their new day. The day began with a march into a long room lined with a sunken, latrine-like toilet of running water on either side. This was one of only two bathroom breaks they had—people learned either to hold it, or mess themselves over the course of the day.
He squatted down like the rest to relieve himself, no longer even conscious of the mass of sweating, stinking men around him doing the same. He had a name once, of course. All those around him did. But to their new, brutal masters, names carried persona, history and respect, and so no names were used, ever. To ensure he never forgot that, his slave name was branded into the flesh of his left forearm, just like all the others.
When they relieved themselves without the benefit of toilet paper, they were marched into the second part of their routine. He closed his eyes and held his breath as tepid water smelling and tasting of bitter chemicals shot up from the floor, down from the ceiling and out from the sides of the narrow passage. They did not stand in it, though. Rather, the column of slaves marched through it, with their motion serving as the means by which the spray reached everything.
Slave Terran-2448DZ took the opportunity to wipe his body with his hands in an effort to get himself as clean as he could. Those around him who had not given up all hope did the same. The last few feet the water switched to hot, dry air that blew away the moisture, leaving them mostly clean and dry. After that waited rows and rows of plain, unremarkable orange single-piece jumpsuits, one-size fits all.
He got dressed with the others and followed as they were then marched by their overseers into the mess-hall. The food was a gelatinous, foul-tasting goo, but surprisingly they were given a lot of it. Granted, they were only fed twice daily, but the meals were substantial enough that Slave Terran-2448DZ did not suffer too badly. While their overseers were cruel and inhumane, they were also dreadfully efficient. Underfed slaves did not produce as much, and so all slaves were fed.
Ten minutes to eat, and then they were once again marching out of their dormitory. The air outside the gigantic metal cube tasted bitter, hot and dry. The sky above was more purple than blue, and as far as he could look, the slave saw only wasteland. It was not a desert, for a desert implied natural forces and ecology in action. No, what they emerged into was the ravaged, violated surface of a once verdant world raped of all resources.
Large, hovering sleds waited to take them hundreds of clicks to where they would work the day away. Overhead, dominating the horizon, was their ultimate project—a man-made moon stretching it's skeletal infrastructure from the horizon to the centre of the sky, staring down ominously with one great, hollow eye.
"Welcome to Despayre," Slave Terran-2448DZ, formerly known as Harry Potter, whispered to himself as he looked up at the Death Star.