Force Smuggler - a quick thank-you for your latest reader-comment - I hope you've been enjoying the drama?!
Jaina had still been fighting her way through Stormtroopers in the airlock when she realised that she liked the Ravelin better than the Yavin Turtle. Since then, every moment she'd spent on board reinforced her instinctive recognition that the Imperial frigate was her kind of ship.
Walking down the corridor, she listened to the music of the engines - the rhythmic pulse of the three big Dyne-series ion-drives in the nacelles at the stern, the steady rumble of a powerful Sienar power-core rising through the deck from the ventral engine-room, and the electric tension of a T-series hyperdrive generator crouched in its fairing foil stretching back beneath the keel. The technology was old, and the New Republic would have dismissed it as inefficient - but the basic drive systems were all fast and reliable. Most of the problems came down to transmission mapping that didn't respond well to rapid linear acceleration or pre-programmed power curves, and Jaina was pretty confident that a little careful handling by the pilot could cope with that.
The fact that the entire ship could be controlled by one person was another thing she liked. From the pilot's seat up on the bridge, Jaina could take care of everything, including sensors, shields and weapons, flying the frigate like a stupidly large, absurdly powerful fighter. Perhaps the Ravelin wasn't quite as fast as an X-wing, and she would have trouble catching TIEs manoeuvring at full acceleration in a combat zone, but that was less important when turbolaser fire from the main turrets functioned as an extension of the frigate's flight envelope, and opponents could be kept comfortably within weapons range without her having to juke around directly on their tail.
She turned along the transverse corridor between the docking arms, and smiled. Directly below the deck she was now standing on, where the power-couplings for the weapons turrets ran forward underneath the corridor, there was supposed to be a weak point where a few well-aimed torpedoes or concussion missiles could practically break the ship in two. But the Ravelin had been refitted with extra armour plating to strengthen the weak spots in the hull - solid rafts of durasteel, reinforced with extra shielding, concealed behind the outer plating. As well as dramatically improving both protection and hull integrity, they also doubled as energy radiators for the hot-running power systems.
She'd enjoyed getting to know her new ride, inspecting the systems with Lowie, Fiver, and even Anakin when he could focus on something that wasn't blonde - they'd managed to overhaul the main computer bay together, with Tahiri crouching on the deck above the maintenance hatch, chatting with them and passing down the hydrospanners, making jokes about her lack of affinity with programmable equipment. Of course, when Jaina had finished working on the motivator and climbed up onto deck, Tahiri had dropped into the space she'd vacated with a grin that made clear that her reasons were nothing to do with starship maintenance, but at that particular moment, Jaina had been enjoying herself too much to mind. Not even the sibling-bond awareness of her brother being pushed down on his back and straddled could entirely spoil her mood.
On the other hand, she felt a bit twitchy about the way that her brother and his girlfriend were apparently trying to mark the entire ship as their shared territory in the shortest time possible - she'd headed forward for a lunchtime snack in the empty crew lounge and found them having a tryst on one of the tables, and the day before, when she'd called the turbolift for the bridge, the doors had opened to reveal them in a clinch inside, and she'd ridden up to the command tower while they continued making out with only slightly less intensity next to her.
Her Force awareness spiked abruptly, and she almost laughed. They weren't in the turbolift today - they were up on the bridge, in the command chair.
Shaking her head and hiding an unexpected grin, Jaina cancelled her turbolift, turned away, and walked off down the deck.
Having a Wookiee for a wingman offered some avenues for distraction - recreational maintenance on the engines and other equipment, a sparring match in the Stormtrooper gym, a game of dejarrik on the board they'd found in the officers' lounge, or simply a good hug - but Lowie was still aboard the Turtle, which was limping back on damaged ion drives from Darlyn Boda after dropping off the Imperial crew.
And the Turtle was another irritation. Quite apart from its general uselessness as a spacecraft, she wasn't sure that keeping her brother's scrapheap freighter docked to the frigate's airlock for any length of time was a great idea, and she was reluctant to try and park the thing in the berthing slot between the bow mandibles, when the Empire had gone to the trouble of modifying the space to carry two perfectly good TIE Defenders. Given the choice, she'd rather keep the TIEs than the old freighter.
But how was she going to persuade her brother to agree? Anakin knows exactly what that piece of junk is, she reflected. A glorified teenage bedroom with a hyperdrive and cargo hold. And that's precisely why he likes it. He had been slumming around with Tahiri on smuggling missions specifically to avoid having to worry about flimsy bunkroom walls at the secret base and the ability of other Jedi to detect strong emotional moments in the Force. She wasn't sure what to make of the fact he seemed to think she was somehow exempt - or didn't really mind. Unlike Anakin, Jaina had no need for a larger personal space than an X-wing cockpit, but that was only because her private life didn't involve anything more physical than engine maintenance and gym workouts.
She shrugged off that problem, and turned her thoughts back to the TIE Defenders. The Imperial fighters were every bit as impressive as the frigate itself - rather than the simple twin ion-engine configuration of the classic TIE designs, with wing arrays thrust out to either side of the central cockpit ball and paired drive jets at the back, the Defender had three wing pylons, one rising vertically upwards, and the other two swung down diagonally on either side - and rather than being mounted directly on the cockpit pod, they were spaced around a massive power core thrust out to the rear. The triple ion-engine gave a lightning-fast speed performance and phenomenal manoeuvrability, and the big central core had a lot of energy to spare. Whereas most TIEs were limited to a pair of blasters and a gunsight scope, the Defenders had a gratifyingly heavy package of weaponry and sensors, plus deflector shields and hyperdrive, and enhanced compensator systems that allowed them to get the most out of their solar-ion drives.
An X-wing was still superior in some respects - the TIE's sensor suite and armament didn't have the same long-range punch, and the on-board computer setup was far less powerful and adaptable - but as a pure superiority dogfighter, she was forced to admit that the Defender was the better plane.
To her surprise, she'd discovered that she didn't really mind that.
And the TIEs also came with the added bonus of Flight Lieutenant Kogo.
The Imperial pilot was her kind of flyboy - easy-on-the-eye in exactly the way she liked, combining casual toughness and a tousle of dark hair, and an expression that switched easily between brooding focus and a roguish smile. Other positive qualities included the fact he'd volunteered himself to help her get to know the captured fighters, the fact he'd then applied reverse-thrust to his initial decision to jump ship with the deserters in order to spend more time on board with her, and his evident comfort with being paraded around at blaster-point with a pair of bulky stun-cuffs on his wrists, far heavier than the ones she'd been forced into on Chimaera - a quality which definitely satisfied her need for control in her relationships.
The problem with Jag Fel, on the other hand, was that he took himself too seriously - she suspected he'd be fun in a pair of stun-cuffs, but whether he was willing to experiment was something she'd never even managed to manoeuvre for a firing-angle on.
So, there were definite advantages to being trapped twenty years in the past, with Lieutenant Kogo to mess around with.
She stepped into the security lobby of the frigate's detention block, frowning as her comlink trembled in her pocket, then smiling as she saw that the message was from Fiver. The droid seemed to have been programmed by her brother to interfere with her private life. She pocketed the comm and hid her amusement, heading down the access gangway, past the cell in which Lieutenant Ames and the remaining bridge and engineering officers were imprisoned, to the one at the end of the corridor, where Lieutenant Kogo had agreed to let her lock him up.
The door of the cell slid open, and the handcuffed TIE Pilot sitting on the metal bunk glanced up, regarding her with an ironic look, half wry appreciation and half unspoken question.
"Come on," she said, gesturing with her pistol. "Walkies."
Kogo stood up easily, and met her eyes - a slightly disorienting manouevre, considering the boost her height got from her boots, and the fact that she was standing on the step up to the hatchway. She laughed a little at that - Jaina Solo didn't really have much option about liking taller men unless she was going to start going out with Ewoks, but she decided she was comfortable with the TIE Pilot's physicality, bigger and less agile than Jag or Zekk, but without the faintly ridiculous proportions of someone like Kyp Durron or Baron Fel.
She nodded in approval as he led the way out of the cells, and found herself marching down the corridor of her new Star Destroyer with the barrel of her pistol in his back, enjoying herself immensely, and trying to decide just how far she could trust him - or at least, how much she could flirt with him.
"Where are we going today?"
"I'm literally just marching you around my ship for fun until I decide what I want to do with you."
There was that roguish smile again. "Sounds promising."
They'd already spent as much time together in the cockpit of a parked TIE Defender as they decently could, and in the process, they'd exhausted their professional repartee, or as much of it as she was willing to share with an Imperial pilot from twenty years in the past - but while they both seemed to be enjoying the search for something else to do to pass the time, they hadn't quite figured out their answers yet.
Yesterday's attempt to improvise something edible out of Imperial-issue ration packs after Tahiri had destroyed the galley droids had been a lot of fun, but the end result probably wasn't an experience worth repeating. She didn't think there would be any risk in going a few rounds on the sparring mat against an opponent who wasn't a Jedi or a Yuuzhan Vong, but she wasn't sure she wanted things to get that physical quite yet. She was enjoying Lieutenant Kogo's cocky confidence too much to disabuse him of the idea that he might be able to stand up to her in a straight fight - and anyway, she actively enjoyed keeping him in stun-cuffs.
On the other hand, she'd been disappointed to discover that TIE Pilots had a very limited concept of recreational starfighter maintenance. The Ravelin's Defenders were paired with MX-series droids, which simply ran automatic calibrations of their systems after each flight, and swapped out anything that fell below minimum performance levels. A full-size Star Destroyer had machine shops whose human techs could remanufacture underperforming TIE Fighter sub-assemblies back to better than factory standard, but there was no room for anything like that aboard the frigate, and as far as Kogo was concerned, Imperial pilots simply didn't get involved in tinkering with the high-performance systems of their fighters in the first place.
Jaina could sort-of see his point - TIE Fighters simply didn't have the array of tunable sensors and thrusters that an X-wing did, or anything like the same package of high-maintenance servo-motors and power circuits. The Santhe/Sienar ion-engines and blaster/gunsight package and the Aratech compensators all emphasised precise alignments and energy-loading limits rather than moving parts, and the added systems on board a Defender - hyperdrive, deflectors, and torpedoes - weren't exactly the sort of thing that even an élite pilot was expected to understand.
"So," he asked. "What made you join the Rebellion?"
Mom used to be the Chief of State was definitely the wrong answer. She decided not to mention Alderaan, and she wasn't sure how much Jedi insights about the dark side would mean to a fighter pilot. "We're the good guys," she shrugged. "And the rightful government of the Galaxy. Endor was almost five years ago. Why are you still wearing that uniform?"
"The Empire gives us the opportunity to knock bad people's heads together. I actually enjoy the chaos since the break down of authority. More room for personal initiative."
She gave him a funny look.
"I was caught up in a Rebel terrorist attack when I was a kid," he shrugged. "Your side has never convinced me it's doing more than trying to seize power through violence. The Empire gives me a tool to stop that kind of violence."
"That's an… unusual attitude for an Imperial."
"How many Imperial loyalists have you ever spoken to, face-to-face? Like you said, we ran out of space wizards and superweapons five years ago. These days, the Empire means me, or Grand Admiral Thrawn, or civilian leaders like Elegin and D'Asta. If you really want Galactic peace, I'm not sure why we're still fighting."
"You might believe that. But there are a lot of other people in the Empire who want to reimpose the old absolute control."
"They're fantasists, or else you're misreading security measures that are designed to prevent the dirty mess of Rebel uprisings and invasions. Anyway, Palpatine was never the all-powerful mastermind that your propaganda tells you. If he was, I'd have expected a whole lot more questions about how and where I used Imperial resources."
She frowned at that. "Do you have this discussion a lot?"
"Mostly with myself," he shrugged, an easy lift of his broad shoulder and shackled hands. "You ever discuss your love of TIE Fighters with your Rebel friends?"
"Unfortunately, my boyfriend's busy helping your crew defect, and my brother's doing things with his little Tusken Raider that I'd rather not discuss in public."
Kogo narrowed his focus on her. "The Wookiee's your boyfriend?"
"Imperial prejudices," she teased, poking him playfully in the chest with the muzzle of her blaster. "Another reason I'm a Rebel. But no. I'm single, if you don't count various contradictory and purely physical relationships with unsuitable fighter pilots."
"I'm not sure if I ought to feel intimidated or encouraged."
"What if I want you to be both?"
"In that case, we'd better figure out what we're doing for our third date."
"Third?"
"Come on, Lieutenant. That smile you gave when I decided to help you out wasn't just because you wanted an insider's guide to a TIE Defender cockpit, and our raid on the galley yesterday was definitely a date. You like Imperial TIE Pilots, I like a girl who puts me in a pair of cuffs and locks me in a cell."
She laughed at that. "You're impossible."
"You find it surprising that an Imperial officer has a complicated sexual kink about authority?"
She shook her head, trying to suppress the amused twist of her lip. "Not really, no."
"Glad we understand each other," he teased. Abruptly, he turned round and stood in front of her, going head-to-head. "So, when do I get to call you something less formal than Lieutenant?"
"I want to get to know you better," she teased him back, stepping closer, and poking him playfully with her gun. She didn't want to trick him with an alias, but she had suspicion that if they jumped straight to first-name terms, she might end up opening up about more than she wanted to. "I'm deciding whether you're just trying to seduce me to the Empire's service."
"You sure you don't want to be seduced?" Kogo smiled, and started walking again, responding to a twitch of the pistol she hadn't even realised she'd made. "You told me your dad's a TIE Pilot who was cashiered for insubordination and turned smuggler, and you grew up wanting to follow the Old Man into the cockpit. You learnt your deck maintenance and pre-flight getting an old TIE we'd left behind on your school campus back to flying condition with your Wookiee friend, and you flew as a racing pilot in a TIE Advanced before you joined the Rebel forces. Or was that just a chat-up line?"
"Something like that, yeah." She'd daydreamed about being a TIE pilot as a kid. She'd restored a damaged TIE Fighter which she'd found crashed on Yavin Four, a relic of the Empire's campaign against the Rebel base. And even if she'd never flown a real TIE in combat, she did have some cockpit experience, flying a TIE Advanced that had once belonged to the Imperial Inquisition on the Rockyard racing circuit at Dubrillion, which she'd maybe overplayed slightly to impress him. "I didn't race for long. Just don't mistake my interest in TIE Fighters for anything political."
"Well, you've not told me much about your military career, so what I know about you seems to be very focused on an unrequited love of Imperial equipment."
Dork. She couldn't not smile at that. "I told you already. Pirates and aliens mostly." She meant the Yuuzhan Vong and Peace Brigade, but she'd phrased it vaguely, letting him assume she had fought against the Nagai and Ssi-ruuk incursions after Endor, and the mercenaries who flew for Imperial warlords like Moff Zsinj and Admiral Teradoc. She could bluff a knowledge of the campaign against Zsinj, because her Dad had been in command of the opposing New Republic fleet, her Uncle Wedge had some great stories about his role, and she'd enjoyed binging on military histories when she'd been a little younger. "Yes, Commander Antilles passed off a stuffed Ewok as one of his squadron, and yes, General Solo told Zsinj to kiss his Wookiee over an open comm just before he shot apart the bridge of his command ship..."
"Thus die all traitors," Kogo quoted, evidently satisfied by the Rebellion's removal of the renegade Grand Moff. But his smile made clear that wasn't all that he was feeling. "So, what next? Do we discuss our favourite holomovies? Or your taste in music? You're a fan of ENC, right?"
She snorted. "You've not told me much about your own background."
"What do you need to know that you don't know already? I fly TIE Fighters for the Empire. I've met this cute, short girl who flies an X-wing for the New Republic, who won't give me any other name to call her past Lieutenant."
"I like you calling me Lieutenant. But I think you owe me at least a little background. I've told you about where my fondness for the TIE Fighter comes from..."
"Oh, the usual. Scholarship at CPI, then the Academy…"
"Prefsbelt, right?"
Kogo gave her a dirty frown, an unspoken how-did-you-know-that? "Right."
She smiled a little at that. Even twenty years in the future, CPI and Prefsbelt were the Empire's top track for training élite pilots. "So you fly TIEs. You think I'm cute. You have a terrible taste in music."
She'd forgive his terrible taste in loud Imperial-era music, though, not least because she had a sneaking liking for some of the more outrageous songs herself.
For a few paces, they simply listened to the conversation of their footsteps and the music of the ship.
She looked at Kogo thoughtfully. "Do they train all you guys to behave like this?"
"What, seducing cute Rebel pilots into joining us by playing up the simple fact we're actually the good guys?"
She shook off the tingling sensation which his teasing combination of cute, stupid and ridiculously Imperial was provoking, and instead of indulging the temptation to kiss him, she lifted her gun up to his lips, smirking to herself at the mild disappointment she sensed from him in the Force.
But he stood back good-naturedly, and she gestured with her gun for him to start walking down the corridor again.
She found that she appreciated the way his tactics worked, the combination of initiative and respect involved in signalling his interest while letting her keep him in his place. She just needed to figure out how she wanted to respond.
"Your quarters," she announced. "Come on."