Anakin was prowling in the corridor just inside the airlock hatch, occasionally glancing out across the hangar bay, to where the Imperial officer was waiting. From time to time, Lieutenant Lannier glanced back in the direction of the Yavin Turtle, but he was mostly just polishing the shiny deck with the soles of his jackboots, occasionally conferring with the two stormtroopers he'd summoned as a backing group.
The scanning team had finished a while back - maybe twenty minutes - and given the lack of stormtrooper squads piling into the hangar, Anakin figured that they hadn't found any way to incriminate them for smuggling or other imagined crimes.
But the fact that Lieutenant Lannier hadn't given them the all-clear, and the fact that Jaina hadn't come back with the severed heads of the command crew, made him think that something, somewhere, was badly wrong.
Jains's recognition code would only hold good until she revealed who she really was, or ran into someone who wasn't convinced that she was who she was pretending to be, and while he hadn't picked up any indication she'd reached that point yet, he couldn't shake the feeling that she was already encircled by bad guys, and about to have a pair of blast doors—real or metaphorical—slam shut in front of her face.
The attempt to slice into the Star Destroyer's hypercomm wasn't going well, either. He could hear Lowie and Fiver in the cockpit, exchanging blatts of droidspeak and growls of Wookiee technical dialects in a complex, stressed exchange that almost sounded like an argument.
As far as he could follow, the main problem was that the the Imperial ship's main router was only coded to Imperial networks, not helped by the fact that the Chimaera's comms software was painfully obsolete by New Republic standards. It wasn't that it was difficult – just that it was slow.
"You're cute when you're all tense and aggressive," Tahiri smiled, leaning on the curve of the bulkhead, and watching him with a hungry little grin.
Anakin found a grin in answer. "Thanks. You're pretty cute, too."
She laughed. "Thanks." Then she walked closer, and poked him. "Relax, captain-boy. Jaina will get this sorted out. She's probably talking quietly with Admiral Pellaeon right now, and sorting all this out... or at least having every officer aboard this ship who outranks her demoted to lieutenant."
"Yeah." Anakin glanced across the hangar bay again, frowning. The idea was pleasant enough, but he couldn't quite make himself believe it. "Come on, let's go and see what they're up to in the cockpit?"
"They're having trouble with the comm?" she asked, falling into step beside him with a bounce.
"We need to figure out a better way to contact Mom and Dad and Uncle Luke," he nodded, leading the way towards the flight deck. "Maybe you should make us some of those Yuuzhan Vong comm pods." He thought for the word. "Villips?"
"If I do, I'll start with an ol-villip for your restraining bolt," she laughed.
Anakin gave her a grin, and rubbed the little yorik-coral nub at the back of his neck, a souvenir from their time in Yuuzhan Vong captivity on Yavin 4. "Should I like that idea as much as I do?" Then they were ducking into the cockpit, where an exasperated Lowie was shouting at a defiantly surly Fiver, and both asked Anakin to agree with them. "Tell me you have some good news," he asked. "How hard is it to find the HoloNet?"
Lowie answered with a growl.
"What do you mean, it isn't there?"
Fiver agreed with the Wookiee.
Anakin sighed. "Great."
"Trouble?" Tahiri smiled.
"They say they can't find the HoloNet." Shaking his head, he dropped into the co-pilot's seat.
Tahiri leaned over his shoulder, grinning at his words, watching as he scanned the screen. "Can you fix it?"
Anakin sighed, and shook his head again. "Nothing but Imperial military channels, all coded. Great."
Lowie asked a question. Anakin thought a moment, then looked at him, and then at Tahiri.
"Keep trying," he told the Wookiee. "The HoloNet can't just disappear. Try a bounce off a BoSS node, or something."
"You have a plan," Tahiri noted, smiling fondly. "Don't you?"
"Maybe," Anakin nodded, glancing out of the side viewports of the canopy. Another Imperial officer had shown up - slightly shorter than Lieutenant Lannier, lower-ranking; Lannier conferred with him for a few moments, then dismissed the boy, who gave a prompt nod, and marched away.
Lannier seemed annoyed, as he turned his gaze towards the Yavin Turtle. Then he gestured to the stormtroopers, and the three Imperials started towards the ship. Even at this distance, Anakin could see the look of spite on the strutting officer's face.
You didn't need to be a Jedi for that.
"I have a real bad feeling about this," Tahiri sighed, giving him a worried look.
"We'd better go and see what they want," he agreed, swinging back out of the seat, and starting down the corridor again.