Hand still stuffed in his pockets, Luke strolled out of the back hallway with the intent to put his mind back to business. Damn if she didn't look like a redhead in that green thing! He took his natural reaction as a lesson on how to better understand -and accept- that moment of distraction Kess and Wedge once had. Point and match, he thought. That worrisome side quest could now be put to rest.
So focused on following Yana to make sure she was okay, and exchanging glances with Nik as the apprentice watched all this with concerned confusion, and keeping his senses open to detect violent ill-intent from the hordes of strangers in this beat-thumping club, Luke didn't notice he'd walked right under it. But now, as he strolled out with one less thing on his mind, his feet stopped short, and his eyes turned up with dismayed humor to find the ass-end of a full-sized X-Wing hanging from the ceiling above everyone's heads.
Luke Skywalker's comical expression to it drew more attention from the neighboring partiers than the X-Wing itself had done. Two people pulled out pocket photocaps to sneak a snapshot of this moment.
Nik, still pretending to watch the mock battle on the simulators, continued to watch all this other activity with alert. He wasn't sure what was going on, but he recognized normal Zhellday-night-bar-drama-happening between budding couples. Now his eyes found Luke smirking at the X-wing over their heads, and grinned up at the thing as well.
The X-Wing was gutted to be sure - the tail ports were empty, indicating the engine was gone. And it was freshly painted - probably some broken loser pulled from the junk pile just for its frame. Luke angled his head and squinted a humored eye at it. Don't I know you from somewhere?
Wedge strolled up and took his beer back from Nik, checking the level in the glass to make sure none of it was gone, and turned to stand beside Luke. "Guess it's only a matter of time before we're museum pieces too."
"What are you guys flying now?" Nik asked as he joined the group, looking up at the big X-wing belly that spread across the ceiling. One fat cable tethered it from the center, but four more smaller cables pinned it up at its nose, aft, and two wings S-foiled open. He used this live example to understand Wedge's lesson from moments ago. It was hard to tell in the arcade visual of a TIE fighter, but an X-wing hanging from four cables, now "pitch", "yaw", and "roll" made a lot more sense.
"A-wings," Wedge reported. "Every time we went up in X-wings, they shot at us. Every time we went up in TIEs, they shot at us."
Luke's brow stretched. "Who was shooting at you?"
"Civilians," Wedge stressed. "Blasters from the street. Didn't do any damage, but they were missing the point of what we were doing up there. I ended up having to send watches with X-wings winged by TIEs, and vice versa, just to confuse everybody until the A-wings were ready."
"A TIE fighter and an X-wing flying in formation on watch?" Luke shook his head and chuckled. "That had to be a sight.
Wedge chortled. "Talk about keeping your hands on the dampers so the black blobs could keep up." (It wasn't true. TIEs were nearly as fast as X-wings, but the insult was appropriate.)
As the two medal-wielding Rebel Veterans and the Momentary Emperor stood in the middle of the floor to talk fighter chat under the ass of the X-wing, as several onlookers snapped secret photocaps of them doing it, as Yana began to sneak out of the back hall and paused to find their backs blocking any invisible escape (and paused longer to eye the X-wing and listen to what they were saying about it), as Ommis and Janson took off their VR helmets and handed them to Rogan and Jewie...
Kess stepped deeper into the Rebel side-room with her eyes hard on the X-wing above her and her face tilted with open-mouth amazement. The thing was big enough that it shadowed an entire craps table, but now the gamblers were enjoying the specific crowd observing the X-wing as much as they paid attention to the betting. Kess stepped up to look up at the nose of it and stared up like she was seeing a ghost.
Nik called over the noise at her with a brotherly dig. "Why are you looking at it like you've never seen one before?!"
Kess's eyes came down from it, but not to look at Nik. Across the length of the craps table, she met eyes with Luke, who met her eyes and smirked to know exactly what she was thinking.
"Do you care?"
He shook his head and shrugged. But pulled one hand from a pocket to gesture her to go ahead.
Wedge shifted his eyes. "What?"
Nik stepped up closer. "Care about what?"
They all watched Kess step up to the craps table and make a scene. She motioned both hands for them to finish this round of bets, then ordered them to grab their chips from the table. A bouncer stepped up to ask what she was doing, but she waved her hand as if a gesture at his face, "This will only take a minute." She grabbed a nearby chair and used it as a step stool to climb on top of the craps table.
The crowd reared away but stood in a circle around all this and smiled to watch and learn what was going on. Even Yana took a step out of the back hall so she could see what Kess was up to. The woman Jedi and veteran X-wing engineer stood her full height on top of the craps table and looked up, but the X-wing was still a half-metre out of her reach. She motioned down to someone. "Hand me up that chair."
Three people worked to hand the chair up to her on the table. She set it center of the green felt and carefully stepped on the seat to raise herself a little higher.
Nik spat at this insanity. "Kess? What the hell are you doing?!" Now a dozen people were capturing this development on pocket vidcaps.
Luke returned both hands to his front pockets and watched with a deep grin and a low voice. "She's checking if it's still in there."
"If what's still in where?"
Ommis laughed, "You think that's Five?" It was hard to tell with the new paint job. There was no Group insignia at all, much less its designation.
"Pretty sure," Luke crossed his arms at his chest and watched with humor.
All watched as Kess brought her head up to the back quarter under the engine, fidgeted a panel with her fingers, and finally knocked it with the side of her fist. The tiny door to a storage compartment popped open and she peeked into the empty cavern behind it.
"Well?" Luke smiled loudly.
Pink with giggles, Kess brought her eyes back down and reached her arm into the empty compartment, fumbling with an inside wall of it, pinching her tongue between her teeth to loosen something that was inside, and finally brought out a small object in her hand.
Kess laughed hard as she looked at it. Luke shook his head and bent over at the waist to laugh too. They met eyes again so she could toss the thing across the space to land in his catcher's hands.
"What is it?"
Luke admired it for a moment, then he held the palm-sized hockey puck up for all to see. "A lightsaber power cell."
As she fidgeted to secure the tiny broken door again, Kess called down to explain it to the others. "It's his hidden spare."
"So that is Red Five?"
"Yeah, apparently."
"Kess, get down from there! You're making the bouncers nervous."
Once she secured the little door, she patted Red Five on the belly and called out loud enough to be heard over the music. "Thank you for your service!"
"You kept a spare in your X-wing?"
"Of course I did." Luke sneered, glancing over at Wedge, "Do you have any idea how much power these things draw?" But in his shift in sights, he saw beyond Wedge's deep interest in the power cell, beyond Nik watching Kess with concern as she was climbing on a chair, beyond Ommis and Janson grinning to watch, beyond Rogan and Jewie half turned in their fake cockpits with VR helmets in their laps so they could watch too, and beyond the four big screens blank of any mock TIE/X-Wing battle going on...
His eyes flicked up to the fifth screen. Imperials crowded the other room to watch on the live vid feed, and all faces still with devious anticipation. Ren Entada stood in the middle of them all, staring as if trying to speak at Luke with telepathy.
As soon as he saw Luke's eyes, Ren's eyes twitched up.
Luke looked to the ceiling, to the X-wing hanging from it over all their heads, and Kess now carefully stepping down from the chair atop the craps table.
The whole thing happened in a fraction of a second.
"KESS GET DOWN!" CRACK! Red Five's center cable snapped free. The X-wing fell by an inch and hung on the four smaller cables. Kess lost her balance getting off the chair and it began to wobble under her feet. The aft cable groaned, broke, and whipped like a parted mooring line. Red Five's ass fell another inch. A glass shattered when it was it was hit by a flying cable. Luke shoved Wedge back as he stomped forward. Women shrieked. Men shouted. Bouncers reared back. Nik turned and grabbed the nearest group of bodies to shoved them out of the way. Wedge turned to do the same and found Yana. He scooped her up and pushed her back to the hallway, protecting her with his whole body. The nose cable snapped and whipped, slicing the green felt of the craps table. Red Five began rock to and fro on its yaw axis. Kess's eyes bulged as she control-crashed onto her back on the table, centering herself directly underneath it. SNAP-SNAP! The port wing cable took out a wall lamp. The starboard wing cable shattered the big screen of an arcade simulator.
Now free of all five restraints tethering it to the second story ceiling, gravity won the battle.
Red Five dropped-