The T-85 X-wing felt strange in the stick. There. He admitted it. It wasn't that Poe was struggling to fly it. It was just that it felt too… new. Too luxurious. The T-70 X-wing he'd made his own had felt smooth and comfortable, broken in through decades of flying from the pilots that owned it before him. The orange paint was scuffed, sure, and it could use some black coating, but it responded to his piloting almost as if it were reading his mind.
This X-wing, a T-85 that had seen fewer combat scenarios than he had fingers, was still a stallion to be broken in. It didn't feel quite ready to respond to him, hesitant to engage in complex manoeuvres to the point Poe felt like he was shoving the stick around to get any kind of traction.
Not to mention, it'd just lost him a quick race to Kazuda Xiono – a little friendly competition while they were out on patrol. Honestly, Kaz's win had only increased Poe's admiration for the kid. Or, well, "kid" – more like "guy", or "pilot", or something. Hardly seemed right calling the twenty-something a kid these days, not since he'd had to evacuate Castilion. If he refrained from referring to Rey as a kid, a part of him felt he should extend Kaz the same courtesy.
Somehow – somehow – that flying death rust bucket Kaz called a racer was still kicking.
Kicking the new X-wing's ass. And most of the Final Order's ass, too, actually – the damn thing had come out of the battle of Exegol near-unscathed.
It'd been several minutes since Kaz had whooped in victory, but now they flew side-by-side in a relative silence – unusual for the pilot, but not unexpected.
"You okay, Kaz?"
"Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine," Kaz stammered, the Fireball descending to position below the X-wing. "Why do you ask?"
Poe grinned, looking over to the other cockpit. "I'd expected you to be gloating about your victory by now."
"Oh. Well…" he gave an exasperated sigh. "Yeah, I guess. I just…"
"You just…?"
"I'm… I dunno. The First Order's gone, for the most part. There's no one out here we really need to worry about. This is really just a formality," Kaz sighed. "Once this is over… I'm not sure what I'll do. I mean, I'll race of course – ultimately that's my plan – but… I'm just… I feel a little lost."
Poe tilted his chin up, looking away from the Fireball back out into open space. "I hear you. In a way, I feel the same."
"Really?"
"Sure. You think Finn and I have a plan for all this? First Order's gone, and we've had some serious losses in the process. We lost Hosnian Prime…"
A loss from just two years prior felt as if it were decades ago. So much had happened since then, so much had changed in a short period. The First Order had decimated the New Republic.
The First Order had decimated Kaz's home.
"We're starting from scratch, Kaz," Poe continued. "It's gonna take some work."
"I guess it's just gonna be strange, not having to constantly watch over our shoulders."
"And that's why we do these patrols. To make sure we don't have to."
They were interrupted when, over the com, CB-23 whistled frantically. Poe frowned, trying to make out what the droid was saying. The high whizzing tone of the droid was too quick for Poe to make out over the com.
"Whoa, slow down! A duplicate what?" Kaz demanded.
The droid continued in its tone. Poe's frown increased, checking his scanners for First Order signals. "Beebee-Ate, are you picking up anything strange?"
The BB unit responded in the negative, but Kaz was still trying to decipher what had gotten CB-23 riled up.
"What's Seebee saying, kid?"
Damn it he called him 'kid' again-
"She's detecting an old astromech signal… something to do with Beebee-Ate? She's talking too fast. I can't understand what she's saying. No, wait!" Kazuda paused, listening again. "A second Beebee-Ate?"
Something wasn't right. The X-wing shuddered ever so slightly – spatial turbulence, probably? – while Poe glanced around open space hoping to find a wrecked BB unit to explain the frantic cries of CB-23. A couple dozen asteroids populated the area, but there were no ships wreckages that he could see, and none the X-wing detected. Was it even possible for two droids to share the same signature? That had to be a thing, right? Somebody's probably done that before.
"I'm not detecting anything."
"Well she's pretty sure- hey!"
The Fireball lurched to the right, peeling away from the X-wing.
"Kaz!"
"Seebee's taken my flight controls!"
Oh, great. Now they have a rogue droid.
Poe slapped the X-wing into order, tailing after the Fireball. "Seebee, stand down," Poe ordered, but the droid continued to desperately whir and whistle about an older duplicate of BB-8.
And that's when the X-wing's alarms sounded.
The T-85 readout instantly swapped from a passive control layout to engaged mode. BB-8 reacted quickly, though the information he was trying to relay to Poe didn't make much sense to the pilot.
"What do you mean, temporal anomaly- oof!"
The X-wing shuddered up and down, rocking his brain in his skull. His thruster controls went offline. "Oh no, now is not a good time to assert dominance," Poe growled at the starfighter.
The Fireball had slowed ahead of him. In the inky black of space, the two pilots' eyes adjusted to what Poe might have called a lightning storm, coming right at them. Grey clouds began to spread outwards towards them, beckoning the two ships while electric pulses ravaged its misty edges.
"General, I've got a bad feeling-"
"I know, I know! Break off your course!"
The Fireball (and more specifically, CB-23) complied, the ships brake flaps engaging. It disappeared from view underneath the X-wing.
The T-85, however, was less than eager to respond. The cloud was dragging the X-wing in, electric tendrils snagging the ship in their grasp.
"Beebee-Ate, I need those thrusters back!"
His trusted friend was trying. Lightning cracked out from the cloud in space, smacking against the X-wing. The X-wing's red display only became brighter while BB-8 called out more damage reports. Life support systems had taken a critical hit. Thrusters were still offline.
"Poe!"
"Stay clear, Kaz! I've got this!"
He most certainly does not 'got this'. But he wasn't about to tell Kaz that. Though, in hindsight, maybe he should have told Kaz he didn't have it.
The X-wing was grazing across the edge of the cloud, pulled in against its will. As much as Poe slammed the stick, the X-wing failed to respond. The starfighter began to hurtle directly into the cloud, and the comline Kazuda began to fizzle while the younger pilot cried out after him.
Oh kriff.
Finn was gonna kill him.
Posting extracts on my Tumblr galaxyistyping
