"Biem Hoa" republican base, astroport.
Once past the glass door of the hangar, Jay walked towards the aircraft with a confident gait, without hiding in any way.
The hangar was virtually deserted. Two soldiers were on duty near the wide open door while the mechanics worked on the ships. She recognized the R-wing ready to go with the warm-up sleeves still connected to it.
The R-wing was a remote reconnaissance vessel developed on the basis of the T65, the old generation fighter that had been superseded by the T70 in the Republican fleet. The famous X-shaped wings had been lengthened and high-dilution thrusters had been adopted to improve range and stealth.
Another particularity, the R-wing was the last ship to keep an astromech R2 unit, this one having been replaced for the following versions by the more compact BB-8 version.
She arrived at the spacecraft and climbed the ladder to the cockpit. The mechanic was in the cockpit making final checks. He heard the sound of footsteps and said without raising his head on the dashboard :
"Well Rudy, you took your time!"
"Rudy was called. I'm replacing him"
The mechanic, astonished, looked up and saw the newcomer.
"Cai?" he said seeing the green suit.
He took a closer look at the face that filled the helmet.
"But you're not..."
"Well yes, you guessed it" Jay replied and grabbed him by the collar.
She put the light saber handle on the back of his neck.
"Get out"
The mechanic unplugged his helmet and left the cabin, still under threat from the lightsaber. Jay then slipped a box into one of his jacket pockets.
"It's a remote mine. You're lying, you die"
"What do you want to know?" Croaked the technician.
"Is this ship ready to go?"
"Yeah, I just finished reheating it"
"We're gonna take the pre-flight check together. Go ahead"
They went around the vessel.
Jay had never flown an R-wing before, as these ships are uncommon, but had repeatedly evaluated captured T65s, so she wasn't surprised by the aircraft. She saw that the safety pins had been removed, checked the hatches and was satisfied. She had seen much worse on the battlefront spaceports.
She said to the mechanic:
"All right, unplug the sleeves"
Without a word, the mechanic disconnected the hoses. The other technicians, noses in the thrusters of a damaged T70, paid them no attention.
"We're going back up. Go ahead"
The mechanic climbed up the ladder and turned to Jay.
"And now ?"
"Pass the upper thrusters at the fixed point"
"But we never do it in the hangar! It's going to make a hell of a fuss!"
"Do it and right away!" Jay replied, raising his gun.
The mechanic sighed, leaned into the cockpit and pushed both levers. The speed of the machines increased slowly. The hangar echoed under the blast of the thrusters. The mechanic stood up and was about to turn to Jay when she fired.
Hit in the chest, he collapsed forward.
Jay held him back, laid him down on the ground, and quickly climbed the ladder to slow the thrusters. The mechanics working at the other end of the hangar had raised their heads and were looking in his direction, covering their ears.
She lowered the levers then rose thumbs up towards the technicians. They understood and returned to their task.
She hurried back down and dragged the stunned engineer out of the ship's thrusters.
"It was either that or cut you with a lightsaber," she thought.
She climbed up the ladder, pulled it from its attachment points, and dropped it to the floor.
" I've got to get my rifle out of the way" she thought.
Fortunately, she found that the cabin had been adapted for long flights. The ejection seat could be extended to the sleeper position, and storage was provided in the sides of the fuselage.
She sat down on the seat and took a look at the instrument panel. To her great relief, it was not much different from that of a fighter, with the exception of the right side which featured the listening and detection systems.
"For the instruction manual, we'll see that once in space" she thought.
She was plugging in her oxygen and headphone cables when she jumped into a block. A siren began to scream. She looked in the rearview mirror and saw that all the lights on the R2 unit were bright red.
Then she noticed the little red light that had just flashed on the dashboard and flipped the switch just below.
"Shut up, copper heap!" she said to the microphone for the Astromech Droid.
The siren stopped, replaced by a stream of synthetic imprecations coming through her headphones.
"And rude with that!"
"It must have detected my ID chip" she thought.
She slowly pushed all four levers forward. The ship rose a meter and slowly exited the hangar. She then closed the cockpit, and very gradually increased power.
The tracks became lines, then dots and then disappeared.
She had returned to the deep black, to her kingdom.