The simulators were set up like an actual launch rack - she had to climb up the ladder to the gantry, march down in full uniform, then drop down another set of rungs and in through the cockpit hatch. She climbed into the seat, pushed up the ladder, pulled shut the hatch. Moments later, the helmet told her that the cockpit was fully pressurised, that she was relying on her suit for a breathable air supply, and she settled into the pre-flight rhythm.
Beyond the circular forward viewport of the cockpit, she could see a remarkably convincing simulation of the launch bay in a Star Destroyer's forward hangar, with a glimpse across the shoulder of a blue planet with wisps of white, dark beyond.
It was just like the simulators she'd used aboard the Chimaera - Pellaeon's Chimaera, twenty years into the future - and she smiled as she felt the engine-rhythm in the seat of her pants.
"You've definitely done this before," the droid said, sounding like it was trying not to sound impressed. She supposed it had all kinds of metrics to compare her performance against. "You're very calm in there."
She powered up more simulated systems, ran checks on others. "Only in sims. Whipped the tail against some of your best guys."
That wasn't entirely true. She'd flown one combat mission in her hot-rod racing TIE, against Yuuzhan Vong invaders in the Rockyard. But she'd talked her way into the simulators on Chimaera, flying a TIE Interceptor against Jag's Clawcraft.
And considering that she was brute-forcing the droid's security protocols to make it recognise her as an Imperial agent, her familiarity with the TIE cockpit might take a little of the pressure off the programming overrides.
"I've simmed against Fel in training." She smiled at the paradox - Jag's father had served as an instructor at the Academy under the Empire, and in the year after Endor, he'd aligned with the New Republic against the tyrannical Director of Imperial Intelligence, and worked to train X-wing pilots. The droid had no way to know she meant his son from the future. "Beat him often enough, too."
"Okay." A different voice, this one sounding human, masculine and Imperial, but actually part of the training program. "Your callsign: Black-2. You are go."
She gripped the controls, jerked back into her seat by simulated g-forces as the launch system flung the TIE down and forward from the hangar - and then she slewed instinctively as a burst of tracer fire cut across space in front of her.
There were four TIEs in her group - two visible ahead, all of them on her display. They were facing off against eight enemy fighters with wide cockpit modules and slender fuselages, flanked by a long pair of sublight engine pods.
"Y-wings?" she asked, laughing a little. "Is this the best you have?"
"Tighten up, Black-2," came the voice with the accent of a flight instructor. "This is about formation and obedience. Pull in beside your leader. Copy his manoeuvres. You want to score high here, right?"
Jaina obeyed the annoying instruction, holding station until she felt cockpit shake the under long-range blaster hits. Power began to drop in her left-side wing assembly.
She responded, redirected.
"Tighten up. Ignore the urge to manoeuvre."
"This is crazy."
"You're doing fine."
She tensed.
"Now break, Black-Two. Take the lead."
In response, she snap-rolled out of the formation, and spun down, then back up in a three-dimensional juke, to bracket the Y-wing's power core squarely in her sights. Two shots, then two more. She slewed away as she got too close, and braked hard - letting the slow opponent gain distance, grinning as his wingmate broke away, trying to catch her tail.
Then she came back full throttle, and on her third press on the trigger, a pair of bolts punched through the shields, and the Y-wing came apart. She was already spinning and dodging to take the next opponent.
The TIE Fighter was responsive, and more manoeuvrable than she'd thought possible - it seemed more responsive than an Interceptor, its turning circle was little more than a spin about its own centre of gravity, and against slow opponents like the Y-wing, simulated killing was vicious fun.
She vaped her fourth Rebel of the engagement.
"Good job, Black-2." The same synthesised Imperial voice. "Now for the next sim."
They flew her against CSA Warpods, R-22 A-wings, droid starfighters from the Clone Wars, more Y-wings - two-seaters with rear guns - and Z-95s. She guessed that opponents with a tougher combination of shields, straight-line speed and firepower might expose the basic TIE Fighter's shortcomings.
They flew her in asteroid belts, low down in urban skies where her TIE manoeurved like a clumsy tug, in patrols, and in fleet battles. They made her fly obstacle courses, and suicide missions.
Most of the time, though, she racked up kills and completions.
"You're making this look easy." The droid was impressed now.
"Not even an X-wing?" she asked, as she vaped the final pair of R-41s. "And what about higher-spec TIE models? An Interceptor, or something. Even a missile boat?"
"Cut the chatter," came the command from the automated training voice - tense, disapproving.
Jaina sighed, and fell silent.
The next scenario was a different TIE variant, finally - but not the sort she wanted. The viewport showed that she was following a cumbersome-looking TIE with twin cylindrical hull pods, between long wing assemblies with their upper and lower sections cranked inwards.
The lack of response from her controls made her certain she was supposed to be in the same type of machine.
"The TIE Bomber," the training voice said, unnecessarily. "Slow, but well-armoured, and really, really good at what we ask it to do."
Jaina didn't answer. The controls were the heaviest of any fighter she'd ever handled, the speed and manoeuvrability somewhere worse than a Y-wing - and while the TIE Bomber had a strong hull, and a relatively compact silhouette considering its bulk, she was still uncomfortable. The Y-wing at least had tough shields, and a hyperdrive.
"Stay in formation," came the instruction. "Follow your lead."
They flew low, over jungles, beneath the belly of a looming orange gas giant. It reminded her a little of Yavin. The target - whatever it was - was up ahead.
They flew on. She got used to the retuned rhythm of the twinned engines, the heavier handling of the controls. She reckoned that while it wouldn't turn or run or point its nose comfortably, it would slew and lift and roll better than she'd expected.
Then a set of blips appeared on her sensor display - astern, closing fast.
"Enemy fighters on our six!"
"Stay in formation. Stay on target."
Seriously?
"We have X-wings, incoming." A synthetic voice, a computer-imitation of another pilot. Sounding panicky.
"Hold your station." That was her. "We complete the mission. Rear planes cover the leaders."
"You're good, Black-2," came the droid's voice. Actually impressed now.
"Just watched a lot of holos." The Rebels had flown like this at Yavin.
Then the X-wings were on them - the best fighters they'd faced in any of the sims, against a TIE variant that couldn't hope to compete.
She paused, and remembered something else she'd heard about Yavin. The Rebels had sent up scouts - General Farlander among them - and the Imperials had used TIE Bombers to take them on with proton torpedoes. It wasn't a part of the mission that was discussed much.
Beside her, a TIE exploded. Behind, another one. The Rebels were the ones using torpedoes today.
"Stay on target!" a voice commanded. The squadron leader. It hardly mattered that he was a computer character. "Black-2, cover me."
"Copy, Leader."
Two X-wings, converging on her ass.
She sideslipped, dodging a quad-linked laser burst. She lost speed, forcing them to overshoot, then accelerated, as they tried to keep her in their brackets.
"What are you doing, Two?"
"Watching your six, Lead."
No answer. Maybe the computer wasn't programmed to handle this.
She flicked her TIE down again, knocking treecaps from the jungle. The X-wings followed, firing. She slid left, then right, drawing their fire. She let them hit her elongated wing assemblies - on the big TIE Bomber, they were mostly there to catch flak.
Then she straightened up. Behind her, the two X-wings adjusted, and snap-rolled into each other.
"Watch my six, Black-2. You're too far behind."
"Copy." She opened her throttle. Three X-wings left.
"Your job is to cover me. My job is to complete the mission."
"Copy that."
She was pretty sure that that wasn't going to happen. The X-wings would vape her, then they'd vape the Leader. The simulation was about obedience, or maybe psych-analysis, seeing when you broke.
A mean grin snuck on her face, and she braked suddenly, slewing away. "I'm hit. Controls jammed. Sorry."
"What the...?!"
The X-wings, their A.I. programmed to recognize an opposing plane's condition from its handling, tagged her as damaged. They accelerated past and shifted aim to the other target. One broke off towards her, in a looping manoeuvre designed to line up a long-range strafe.
She grinned. The two X-wings were ahead now. They were gunning for the TIE Leader. She let them have him.
She straightened out. Rose up. Accelerated. Fired her blasters to catch their attention.
They manoeuvred predictably in answer, snapping left and right to take her in a scissor-S. Broadside on, they had no countermeasures, no targeted jamming, and they were distinct enough, even moving at speed, for her sensors to lock on.
So she sent a proton torpedo straight into the cockpit of each.
"Gotcha!" she said, clenching her fist as she jockeyed the controls in her other hand.
The X-wing on her tail was still there, but now it was one-on-one.
"Careful on the controls."
She ignored the voice. Now that she had some practice, she was used to the way the TIE Bomber moved easily in straight lateral and vertical directions, a trick which the pursuing X-wing couldn't match.
When she got bored of that, she put the TIE Bomber through a snap-roll, dodging quad-linked laser fire - then did it again, braking hard to try to make him overshoot.
They must have upped the A.I. The X-wing matched her moves.
For sheer fun, she flipped up and flew the TIE-Bomber on its side a while. working out how it handled in that configuration.
Then she levelled out. Time to get that X-wing off me.
She sideslipped, braked, and found a way to actually make the darn thing turn.
The X-wing screamed past, and she lobbed a proton torpedo straight into the gap between its strike foils.
From there on out, taking out the target - simply a generic marksmanship beacon - was easy.
"You beat the Bomber mission?" the droid asked, disbelief clear in its voice, and all the injured pride she'd expect of a snooty, Imperial-accented protocol unit. "No-one beats the Bomber test. Not even Master Kogo did that."
She lifted the controls back into her midriff, feeling a sense of satisfaction and elation that was only partially to do with the simulated sensation of rising out of a gravity-well towards the stars on full power - and then she was suddenly aware of a shortness of breath, as if the feed from her suit's air-supply had suddenly switched to para-gas. She reached one hand to the helmet neck, to pull it off.
Then her holo-displays vanished, and even her visor eyepieces went dark.
"Something's wrong with my kriffing suit!"
A silence. She paused, embarrassed.
Jaina's danger-sense flared abruptly, and her head snapped back, her body arching in the chair. She blacked out for a moment, and found herself slumped forward in the pilot's seat, dazed as if she'd just been shot in the face.
No, she had been shot in the face - but her Jedi instincts had reacted automatically, her Force reflexes acting to deflect and dissipate the stun-bolt.
The forehead strap, she thought. There was some sort of modification in the forehead strap of the helmet that the kriffing droid had given her. She could feel the pressure of an emitter muzzle...
She yelled, as the droid tried to shoot her again, barely fighting off the stun-bolt. She felt drunk, and she couldn't even raise her gloved hands.
She was trapped inside her suit, strapped and collared into a Jaina-shaped straightjacket, and the third stun-bolt would knock her out completely.
But she was a Jedi. Even in a locked TIE cockpit, she would be able to use the Force to bust out.
"I am sure you won't object, Emperor's Hand," the droid voice crackled in her ear. "Please stop resisting my preliminary stun-bolts. I am taking the liberty to flash-print your mind, installing the full set of technical skills and military discipline necessary for a TIE Pilot, and a personality-matrix overwrite built on complete obedience to the Empire. I do think Master Kogo will be pleased with the results."
But when she felt the third stun-shot snap out for her, she took the rasp of her breath against the mask and the stubborn knuckle of defiance, and turned everything into an upward punch of energy.
The top hatch flew straight off the simulator, and she launched herself straight up in a Force-propelled leap. She twisted in mid-air, shaking off most of the stun-haze, and landed on the deck - not a perfect three-skid Jedi pose, but close enough to show who was in charge.
"Oh, kark," the droid said.
And this helmet shouldn't be any harder to get out of than a pair of binders.
She wrenched the mask off just in time to see a blur of blonde aggression slam into the control droid, and a bright-green lightsaber lash out, slashing through chassis armour and servo-struts in a shriek of electric discharge. Tahri tugged the blade back, dismembering the droid completely, and stood up barefoot on the console of the control desk, letting it topple in pieces to the deck.
She flashed Jaina a grin.
Jaina exhaled hard. There had been none of the playful enthusiasm in that takedown with which the girl had dismembered the other droids around the ship, or even the poetry of her fighting-style against the stormtroopers - just focused Yuuzhan Vong aggression and hostility, and a determination to stop the bad droid before it mind-wiped Jaina.
Anakin and Kogo were hurrying through the hatchway in pursuit - both of them in Imperial uniform, though Anakin looked like he'd just got out of bed, while Kogo was immaculate, shaking off his stun-cuffs and calling a long-shafted vibroblade off the wall of the rec room with the Force.
Fiver, taking up the rear, was tootling urgently, but evidently very satisfied with the whole mess.
"Jaina? Are you all right?"
She slicked her gloved hand back through her hair. "Yeah, I'm okay." She frowned at Kogo. "Your droid just wanted turn me me into a good little Imperial girl for you. I need to take some time to think about the offer. Maybe you can start by explaining some of the stuff you've been holding out on us." She reached, and called her own lightsaber through, from the top of her discarded uniform, then gave him a challenging glare.
"Vess Kogo," he said, hesitating for a moment and then settling for casually swapping the Force-pike to his off-side and offering her his hand as she stood up. "They call me the Emperor's Hand."
A quick author's note - Vess Kogo is a preestablished Emperor's Hand, albeit not a very widely-known one, who showed up unannounced after I realised I hadn't found the right setup for this scene. I think he makes an effective Imperial foil for Jaina, allowing them both to test each other's boundaries, prejudices and self-contradictions, and I deliberately wrote their interaction open-endedly, with potential for both betrayal and redemption, but I hope no readers feel short-changed by this pre-planned reveal. The use of pilot training at CPI as cover for the early stages of training as an Emperor's Hand is borrowed from an old series of online short-stories called "Heavy Duty", while Kato is a direct counterpart to Mara's Imperial droid K3 from the Emperor's Hand comic-book...