"Surrender?!" Jaina asked, giving him a shocked and stubborn look.
"Yeah," Anakin nodded, watching the Imperial frigate as it swung round in front of the freighter's cockpit for another pass.
Two turbolaser turrets underneath the bows, and another pair on the upper deck in front of the bridge, plus smaller anti-starfighter emplacements along the sides of the hull, all swinging round to track the drifting freighter. Three big engines across the back, implying a powerful drive system, with energy to spare for shields and sensors. Anakin reckoned that it would take at least a squadron of starfighters and a couple of gunships to handle a ship like that head on, and without the option of trying to break for hyperspace, a freighter like the Yavin Turtle had no option except surrender.
Lowie gave an angry yawn as he came back to the bridge, reminding Anakin just how much Wookiees hated Imperials, and how much they objected to surrendering. Jaina pushed up from the pilot's seat, standing with her arms folded, scowling at the Imperial ship like she was personally offended by it.
From the mood she was in, Anakin was pretty sure she wanted to try shooting down the frigate, armed with her Jedi fighter-pilot skills and however many shots were left in the gun-turret's energy capacitor.
"Trust me," Anakin emphasised. I love you, sis. But I'm not sure that this is quite the time. "Hail them and tell them we surrender."
"Fine," Jaina said, her voice exasperated, body language tense, leaning forward and punching buttons on the comm console. "Attention, Imperial frigate - this is the Rebel transport Yavin Turtle. We surrender. I repeat, we surrender. Do not shoot."
There were still options, if they wanted to fight it out. Hurrying back to the engineering bay and trying to decouple the overheating starboard engine, so they could crash the power back on and punch out vertically, hotwiring the hyperdrive for a blind jump past the blockade. The old smuggler's trick of firing off an escape pod into the towering thunderheads of the cloud layer, programmed to burn jets on a run for one of the old mining platforms, perhaps backed up by some improvised theater on the comm, in the hope that the Imperial ship would go chasing after it.
But Anakin wasn't sure any of that was a smart idea - not with a Star Destroyer, a Grand Admiral, and several squadrons of TIE Fighters deployed directly overhead.
That was why he had told Jaina to hail the frigate - the Imperial light cruiser Ravelin, according to the officer who'd answered - and signalled their surrender.
"Good girl, Yavin Turtle," the Imperial voice was saying. "Now power down your ship, and wait to be taken into Imperial detention."
Jaina gave another dirty scowl, and started switching off the ship's remaining systems. "Copy, Ravelin," she sighed.
Tahiri's eyes snuck up, asking him a silent question. In reply, he just ran a hand through her hair, and gently kissed the three scars on her forehead. She smiled, and snuggled down a little tighter, utterly content.
Anakin smiled a little in reply.
The cockpit had gone quiet, the control sticks slack, the flight consoles darkened almost totally. Small individual lights, dimmed to show that they were running on auxiliary, indicated the systems that Jaina had left online - deck gravity and the main repulsorlift, and the atmospheric scrubber which cycled oxygen into the ship's stale air - but they were no match for the simple brightness of a Bespin sky, shining through the glazed panels of the canopy. The quiet, familiar conversations of their bodies, three humans and a Wookiee, had replaced the rhythmic noises and vibrations of a spaceship.
Even Jaina's mood seemed to have improved a little.
If it hadn't been for the Imperial frigate, manoeuvring in the space between them and the towering clouds and the vast blue sky beyond, Anakin reckoned that it would have been a really perfect moment.
"Why do they call it a communications frigate?" Tahiri asked, rolling round in his lap to look at the Imperials.
"The Empire leaves the long-range HoloNet equipment off most of its ships," Jaina explained. "Means the Moffs can control everyone more easily if their cruisers and patrol ships need to report back to the sector capital for news and orders. But when they want to talk to someone in real-time, they have to send a hypercomm transceiver out to them first. A fast little ship like that makes a pretty good carrier, and when it's not on a deployment, it can act as a quick-riposte cruiser or a system guardship. I think they also use them for HoloNet monitoring. Tracking unauthorised comm-scan systems, that sort of thing."
"Right." Tahiri fell silent, and rested herself against Anakin.
Anakin gave the Imperial ship a thoughtful look.
"You think they're carrying a really big boarding party on that thing?" he asked, nodding to the Ravelin. "Or are they just here to ride scattergun on a shuttle full of stormtroopers, and make sure we don't do anything dumb like try to run away?"
Jaina pursed her lips, frowning at the approaching Imperial ship. "Most likely a boarding shuttle. I mean, you can dock a freighter at the side hatch just ahead of the bridge, but I think it's mostly here to keep us in line - it can run us down, shoot us apart, and jam our sensors. Thrawn just wants to oppress us a little without having to involve the deck-polishers on his Star Destroyer."
Anakin nodded, and simply watched in silence, with Tahiri in his lap, while the Imperials manoeuvred into position to capture them. The frigate slowed and then swung around in a graceful turn, circling around them to drop onto a parallel course alongside them, close enough that Anakin could see the khaki-clad Imperial officers through the bridge viewports.
Anakin had a hunch that they weren't going to simply circle round the Yavin Turtle while a boarding party came over in a shuttle, either.
"Attention, freighter Yavin Turtle," a comm-voice said. Anakin understood now why the accents were less polished than his image of the Empire. "This is the Imperial cruiser Ravelin. Stand by to dock with our port-side boarding hatch."
"Great," Jaina sighed. "I hope nobody had a backup plan of hijacking an Imperial boarding shuttle." She thumbed the comm. "Copy, Ravelin. Our drives are shot, so we don't have manoeuvring control. You're going to have to steer us in on your grab-beam. I hope you've got a good crew on that thing."
"Don't worry, Rebel girl. We'll take good care of you."
She gave Anakin a dirty look, as if she blamed him for the accuracy of the Imperial frigate's gunnery.
"Hey," Anakin said, wondering why he felt so confident all of a sudden. "We can handle this."
"Which part," Jaina asked. "Being boarded by the Empire again, or being stuck twenty years in the past?"
"Relax," Anakin protested. "This is us we're talking about."
"What is that meant to mean, Little Brother?" Jaina asked, hands on her hips now. "You're not seriously thinking about fighting an Imperial cruiser? I mean, sure, give me an X-wing or even the gun turret on this garbage scow, but hand-to-hand...?!"
Anakin nodded. "We got away from a Star Destroyer earlier today. We can handle a frigate," he said, trying to sound casual, wondering if he meant it. "How many soldiers are there going to be aboard that thing?"
"They usually carry at least a squad of soldiers, sometimes up to fifty – in the old days, it was stormtroopers." She paused, and frowned. "Why? What difference does it make?"
"Fifty stormtroopers," Anakin nodded. "That's good."
Tahiri looked surprised. Jaina looked annoyed.
"Why isn't the Force telling me you're joking, Little Brother? Since when was fifty stormtroopers on an Imperial cruiser good?"
Anakin grinned openly, and nodded upwards, through the overhead panes of the cockpit canopy, to where the long triangle of Chimaera was visible high above them. "Because there are ten thousand soldiers on that one, and a Navy crew of thirty thousand, too."
Jaina sighed. "Thanks for the reminder."
"Yeah, they all talk and act like Jag Fel, too."
Tahiri laughed. Jaina just shook her head.
"Shut up. Just shut up."
Anakin smiled at her. Maybe it was a good plan, for once, to do what his sister suggested.
But then again, the plan he'd been putting together in his head while the Imperial frigate manoeuvred around them in Bespin's sky might be even better.
"I'll admit, lightsaber-boy," Tahiri smiled, wriggling round on his lap and smirking brightly, slipping her hand into the holster under his jacket handing him his lightsaber. "I'm sort of curious what you have planned."
Anakin gave her a smile. "Just follow my lead."
Lowie laughed at that, for some reason. Tahiri seemed amused too.
"Come on," he said. "Let's get this over with. Lowie. Fiver, you too. Jaina can stay here and chat up the Jag Fel clones on the comm, if that's her thing."
Tahiri grinned at him, as the Wookiee and the droid celebrated the idea of knocking some stormtrooper helmets together. They headed back down the freighter's corridors towards the airlock, formed up together like a combat squad.
"We're going to just do this head-on?"
Anakin nodded. "Yeah."
As they headed down the corridor, Anakin felt a flicker from the Yavin Turtle's inertial fields. The frigate's tractor-beam controller was spinning the freighter so that one of its docking hatches was pointed towards one of theirs, and then a thunk ran through the hull, as the freighter was pulled alongside and connected with the Imperial ship.
"That's us now permanently clamped to the Imperials," Jaina called down the corridor from the cockpit. "They're also pointing two quad lasers and a twin-turbolaser at my cockpit."
Lowie made a noise of objection, and Tahiri glanced at Anakin, but he just shrugged.
As they approached the airlock, the sound of something industrial echoed through the Yavin Turtle's hull - the Imperials on the far side of the hatch, either securing them more permanently together, or trying to gain access to his ship.
"You sure this is a good idea?" Tahiri asked, looking across the corridor at him with a lazy, almost-whimsical smile.
"We have a Wookiee," Anakin pointed out, nodding to Lowie. His fist closed around the metal hilt of his weapon. "And lightsabers."
Lowie's reply would normally have made Anakin smile, but his lips were as level as his frown, as he tapped the access code into the keypad beside the blast door - he didn't want the Imperials opening the hatch with cutting tools.
"Wookiees with lightsabers," Tahiri translated, with a bright flash of a grin.
"Yeah," he said, smiling for a moment, turning forward as the hatch shot upwards.
There wasn't a strutting Imperial officer, with a scan team this time, just a squad of Stormtroopers - about ten or twenty of them, crowded in the access corridor aboard the frigate, with their blasters raised towards the hatchway, crouched and tense in a way that suggested they'd been about to storm the ship.
"Hey," Anakin said, raising his hands.
The Imperials seemed to have been taken by surprise, unsure how to react to the scene that had greeted them inside the Yavin Turtle's hatch - Anakin on the right in his nerfhide jacket, hands raised in a parody of surrender, Tahiri on the left in just his t-shirt and a pair of panties, smirking at them in a way that was probably more dangerous than they realised. Lowie huge and savage at the back. Fiver warbling and dancing on his treads. And Jaina pacing down the corridor to join them with the poise of an Emperor's Hand on an assassination mission.
"Surrender," one of the stormtroopers in the front rank said. "You Rebel scum."
"Actually," Anakin said, with a casual smile. "I was hoping you'd surrender."
Even wearing his helmet, the stormtrooper gave him what could only be described as a funny look. "You were hoping... we'd surrender?"
"Trust me," he said, leveling his gaze along the clenched ranks of stormtroopers, before looking back at the one who'd spoken. "You really don't want to be fighting us."
The stormtrooper tilted his head, trying to makes sense of what was going on. "Is this some kind of joke?" The harsh voice didn't sound amused - and he'd shaken off the momentary bewilderment of Anakin's accidental mind-trick, too.
"No joke," Anakin said, and the four lightsabers flashed out - his own lambent blade in a high guard, Tahiri's green-edged one thrusting up diagonally beside him, Lowie's savage yellow longsword held tall to his right in a two-fisted blocking guard, Jaina's weapon in a duellist's low one-handed grip, deep violet tinged with red.
The stormtrooper tensed, his blaster carbine twitching.
"Put the guns down and stand down your men before you do anything stupid," Anakin warned him, fixing his gaze on the eyeplates of his helmet, hoping that the Imperial wasn't going to do the dumb and obvious thing. Hoping that he could will him to stand down. "Comm your captain on the bridge, and tell him to surrender your ship."
The stormtrooper looked confused again. Anakin guessed he wasn't trained for this sort of situation.
Anakin's lip twisted as he tried to hide his smile. "We're Jedi Knights. We have a Wookiee with a lightsaber. This is not going to go the way you want."
But apparently, Imperial stormtroopers didn't know how to take the hint. "Blast them!"