A couple of quick reader-replies before the update...
Jedi Knight Leia Skywalker - you were absolutely right about the time travel! I actually considered setting this around ESB as a homage to the old TIE Fighter computer game, but in the end, a timeframe at the start of the classic Thrawn trilogy of novels just "clicked"...
Force Smuggler - yes, they escaped, and yes, they finally worked out what had happened! How early was that obvious to you?!
Thank you both for your enthusiasm!
Anakin frowned as the Turtle's hull shook again, and tugged his pants back on.
They'd dropped deep into Bespin's skies, into the thick layer of toxic fog beneath the clouds, shutting down every system that wasn't absolutely essential in order to protect the ship against detection from the Imperials' sensors, and then they'd simply waited - sitting tight while TIE Bombers dropped seismic charges, trying to force them back into movement.
Thankfully, the TIE Pilots' ability to actually find a target didn't seem to be that much better than the stereotypical Stormtrooper from an old adventure holo.
Another echo rocked the deck. Tahiri paused in the act of trying on another pair of boots, and looked across the darkened space of their shared quarters towards him - her eyes were watching him button up his waistband, but her eyebrows raised in question.
"Yeah, they sound further away," he nodded, trying not to smile.
In the early part of the Imperial search, long echoes of rolling thunder had made music on the hull, and at one point, a lightning flash had even lit the gloom around Yavin Turtle. Anakin was pretty sure that the storms were the result of a full-scale bombardment from the Chimaera - off-target like everything else the Empire was throwing at them, but they would have looked spectacular from the perspective of a Star Destroyer high overhead in a blockade orbit. The sensor wavelengths which had traced the hull, in contrast, had been barely powerful enough to be picked up by Fiver's sensitive handling of the freighter's own array in passive-listening mode, and certainly too faint to threaten any useful return signal. Those might have come from the frigate, patrolling deeper in the Bespin clouds than anyone would risk an Imperial-class vessel. Possibly Thrawn had called in other ships, as well.
Still, at least being actively attacked by a small Imperial fleet was a distraction from the disorientation of finding themselves two decades in the past. The enforced pause had also allowed them to get changed.
Or something. Tahiri and Anakin had locked eyes in the cockpit, just after the lightning flash, and he'd decided there were more important things than working out if it was an actual turbolaser bolt or just igniting tibanna gas.
Anakin sat down on the bunk to pull on his scuffed nerfhide boots, but his eyes were still on Tahiri. She had flirted with the idea of wearing proper clothes, or at least stealing another of his t-shirts and trying on some pairs of boots, but mostly just to pass the time while he got dressed - in the end, she'd simply slipped back into the same t-shirt she'd stolen earlier, and as he watched, she belted her lightsaber over her underwear, and struck a pose with her hips cocked.
"Don't tempt me," he grinned, pausing before fastening his gunbelt round his waist.
"You guys done yet?" Jaina asked, leaning against the side of the open hatchway with her arms forward and a look of mild amusement on her lips. She'd disappeared off to do some maintenance on the hyperdrive, and reappeared with her flight suit belted round her waist and only a sleeveless undershirt on top. She had ostensibly dropped by to collect her borrowed weapons, but Anakin was pretty sure she was just interrupting, which was why he'd been pretending to ignore her.
"You look more relaxed," Anakin told her, picking up the two lightsabers from the box beside the bunk, clipping his own weapon into the shoulder holster underneath his nerfhide jacket, and and handing her one back to her.
"Thanks for the loan of these," Tahiri said, returning her holdout pistol and her throwing knives. "That little Gee-Tech's really nice." She glanced at Anakin. "I think I know what I want next time we're back on the Venture."
A moment's awkward silence, while Jaina simply sheathed the blades in the back of her heels, and tucked the blaster out of sight in its boot-leg holster.
"Let's get back to the cockpit," she said, turning and leading the way down the corridor.
Tahiri gave a mischievous look, hurrying up towards the front of the ship alongside Anakin.
The view outside the cockpit was just a big orange blur - exactly the same as it had been an hour earlier, with Lowie in the co-pilot's seat and Fiver in the droid socket, watching the passive sensors, offering overlapping explanations in Shyriiwook and droidspeak that confirmed the Imperials were now at least fifteen kilometers away, and aiming several kilometers too high.
"Closer than I'd thought," Jaina noted, settling back in the pilot's seat, before she realised they were still powered down, shaking her head and leaning back with her hands behind her head. "Next time, you persuade Uncle Luke to lend us something that has a little speed or firepower, or at least a decent set of shields."
"Hey," Anakin objected. "I like the Turtle. She's reliable and she doesn't attract too much attention."
"I wish there was something in your personal life that made that statement make any sense, Little Brother." Jaina shook her head.
"Hey. I like to be different. Besides, you're Aunt Mara's apprentice and co-pilot. If you really want a ship with the performance of a fighter, borrow the Shadow..."
Jaina didn't answer, so Anakin just let the discussion drift into silence, standing in the back of the cockpit with Tahiri leaning in beside him, her forearm balanced on his shoulder, his hand wrapped around her body, admiring each other's reflections in the cockpit panes.
"So, we just stay here and wait some more?"
"Mhm."
Maybe a little making-out in public places was going to annoy his sister, but Tahiri was too cute to resist, not least because she seemed just as keen on him.
The fact that the intensity of the attack had gradually reduced was probably something to celebrate, though Anakin wasn't sure quite what it implied - maybe the turbolaser storm had simply moved too far away for anything at all to register aboard the Turtle's passive systems, and the TIE Bombers were just a secondary pattern to test the perimeter, or perhaps they were scaling back their attack, before giving up and pulling out of the system. Even at this depth, they ought to be able to pick up the massive energy spike of Chimaera's hyperdrive making the jump to lightspeed, and the Force-flicker of forty thousand disciplined Imperial crewers accelerating away into starlines.
Once that was out of the way, they could concentrate on the problem of being twenty years in the past.
"You are going to get us into trouble," Tahiri said, her eyes lifted up to his, her lips glossy and amused.
"Maybe I don't mind?" he offered, and by mutual consent, they decided to make out some more.
Lowie suggested that someone ought to go and check on the gun turret, and ambled past, giving them a friendly punch on the shoulder as he went, suggesting that if Anakin wanted to show Tahiri some more of how to co-pilot the ship, they could use his chair.
"I think that was a hint," Tahiri smiled.
"All right," Anakin agreed, sweeping back his hair with one hand and leaning over the comm-scan console, checking the sensor lights, a dislocated pattern in the darkness of the powered-down cockpit, surprisingly isolated with the other systems switched to standby.
Tahiri put her hand on his rear end, clearly enjoying herself. "Focus on the ship," she teased.
Jaina didn't seem to notice.
After a while, the bombs stopped. Through the Force, Anakin had a distant sense of the TIE Pilots being recalled.
Tahiri grinned, bright and eager to get going - she'd sensed both the TIE Bombers being recalled, and Anakin's immediate reaction.
"I guess they gave up," Jaina shrugged.
Anakin tensed, looking out into the clouds with a quiet frown.
"We need to move," he warned. "Now."
"Okay," Jaina said, flicking overhead switches. "Let's hope you're right."
Anakin didn't answer, as the lights came around the cockpit. The whine of the drives announced that they had power, there was a sight swaying lift beneath the deck as the repulsors began to push them up, a slight sway as the hull ws genty buffeted and the faintest hint of vertical motion in the opaque pattern of the gas-fog outside.
"Are we still on shields?" Tahiri asked, settling in his lap.
"Sensors," he explained, pivoting the array so that the dish was angled steeply upwards into the Bespin sky, searching for the signal noise of a Star Destroyer. "The display will show any signal noise, and a big source is likely to be the Chimaera using active scanning to try and locate us. The advantage is that you can usually pick them up a little quicker than they detect you."
"The problem with that being that the Imperials might be handing off their sensor work to their TIE Recon squadron using tight-beam links," Jaina interjected. "Means we can't triangulate the Star Destroyer until they-"
Even this deep, even with the freighter's low-spec systems, the main rectenna still picked up the energy surge of the Chimaera opening fire, and there wa no mistaking the glow of energy bolts flashing past the cockpit as the turbolasers plunged deep into the Bespin clouds, then the brighter loom of detonation, a moment before the shockwave slammed against the Turtle's hull.
"That was too close!"
"Get us out of here."
"You of all people should know there are mechanical limits to acceleration in a high-gee environment composed of thick orange soup," Jaina growled, with a shake of her head. "And right now, we've already found out what they are for a ship with the aerodynamics of a construction block and the repulsors of a groundcar."
They rose up slowly at first, unable to do more than lift through the dense cloud on antigravs, but Jaina threw full power to the thrusters when Fiver announced that the sky was clear enough, tilting the freighter back on its rockets and punching steeply upwards. The whine of power surging from the drives was mostly the deck gravity responding to the abrupt manoeuvre, but there was a definite kick of acceleration all the same, and they were soon in the cloud layer - punching upwards through clear blue sky between towering thunderheads, reminding Anakin just what a majestic planet Bespin was.
Tahiri straddled his lap, hands on his shoulders. "I just had a thought."
"Yeah?"
"Grand Admiral Thrawn is really good at tactics, right. Could he have deliberately ordered that turbolaser strike, knowing that we'd sense what he was doing and make a run like this...?"
The Turtle's cockpit shook in answer, as turbolaser fire slammed into the rear of the hull.
"Kriff!"
Jaina swung the ship around, and they were suddenly head-to-head against the Imperial frigate, its dagger-hull thrusting through the clouds, so close that Jaina threw the freighter into an instinctive collision loop, standing the hull on its side and circling away.
"How did they even get there?!" Tahiri exclaimed. "There's nothing on the sensor scope."
"They're not even using sensors," Anakin growled. "They knew exactly where to wait for us..."
"They knew exactly where to hit us, too," Jaina added, as the Turtle began to slow and swing off-course, and the hyperdrive spun off into silence. "They knocked out our starboard ion drive with the first shot, and the overload slagged the engine power couplings. I'm going to have to shut down the main core before we overheat back there, and disconnect the damaged thruster manually before we can restart. Any smart suggestions for how we can do that before that frigate shoots this barge out of the sky?"
Anakin squinted out at the approaching Imperial ship. "Comm them," he said. "Tell them we surrender."