"SoroSuub Preybirds?" Tahiri asked, making that face she made when she was trying not to make a face.
"They're perfectly good fighters," Jaina countered, pulling on her pilot's gloves.
Tahiri gave her a skewed look.
"Speak your mind," Jaina gestured.
"I know I'm not the most natural person with the tech stuff," she said, running her hand through her tousle of blonde hair. In the black jumpsuit of an Imperial pilot, with the zipper pulled half-way down so that the unisex cut was comfortable on her chest, she looked elegantly piratical. "But I am a qualified X-wing pilot. And on pretty much every count, these things come in inferior."
"Let's just see how they fly in the simulator?" Jaina suggested softly. "If they don't work out, we can always send them back."
"And swap them for fancy TIEs?" Tahiri asked.
Jaina flashed her a grin, without answering directly. A few weeks earlier, her husband had walked out on her and run off to Hapes with a barbarian space queen, so she'd drunkenly agreed to take over his abandoned position as the Empire's head-of-state, in exchange for having Tahiri released from an Imperial prison to serve as her bodyguard. She'd hoped that two Jedi girls might be able to make some improvements to the Empire's attitude—but since then, the Moffs had gradually replaced everything from her wardrobe to her music collection with Imperial alternatives, and Tahiri, who'd somehow promoted herself from bodyguard to girlfriend, had entered into the game with enthusiasm.
She suspected that Moff Tagge was trying to prove a point by allocating them the big Imperial fighters and a pair of simulator pods for training, but she wanted to be armed with comprehensive simulator results before she tried to swap the Preybirds for TIE Defenders. "Moff Sacker will enjoy watching the recordings of you being shot down," she teased.
The simulators were a close copy of the front of the Preybird's fuselage, with the cockpit perched above the nose, far further forward than the canopy on an X-wing. Even though they were sitting directly on the deck, reflecting the fact that Preybirds didn't bother with conventional undercarriage struts, the cockpit seemed a long way off the ground and when the actual fighters had arrived that morning, Jaina had been surprised how much space they took up in the hangar, compared with her old X-wing—the fuselage was almost twice as long, partially to accommodate the concussion missile system, with a magazine amidships and firing tubes front and aft.
"Here goes nothing," Tahiri said, pulling on her helmet—one advantage of the Preybirds was that they didn't have to suit up for hard vacuum like TIE Pilots, and the headgear was open at the front, although there was a solid jawbar containing the usual breather and speaker modules, with a drop-down glareshade visor and a flexible neck coupling for the standard flight-suit collar, to provide a rudimentary atmospheric seal when required. Jaina wasn't entirely sure that the design was better than the fully-open X-wing version, but they felt a lot less like bondage hoods than the normal Imperial Pilot helmet, and she decided that she did probably appreciate that.
She was supposed to be the Empire's head of state, and flying fighter missions in a gimp suit would have made her feel too vulnerable, too submissive. Perhaps that was, subconsciously, why she'd been prepared to give the big fighters a chance.
She put a hand to the top bar of the ladder, and slotted one toecap into the notch of the bottom rung, swinging the canopy open as she levered up, and dropped into the seat.
Just like getting into an X-wing, she thought.
The first thing she noticed was the sense of space—the transparent canopy seemed to have taller side panels than the X-wing, and the size of the cockpit was increased by a back-to-back seat for an optional rear-facing co-pilot, but that wasn't the whole reason why she felt like she had so much room. In the X-wing, with the bulky housing for the power core and hyperdrive directly behind the pilot, the view astern was badly restricted, and she realised for the first time how much the X-wing's forward view was also compromised, with the long nose of the fuselage thrusting ahead to accommodate the sensor gear. True, the TIE Fighter was far worse—the circular forward viewport of the ball cockpit was little more than a gunsight for the pilot, designed to be guided onto target by a flight controller aboard a capital ship. But that didn't mean this wasn't... well, better.
She turned round in the pilot's seat, appreciating the freedom the low backrest of the chair provided, and the excellent view directly astern, facilitated by the way the fuselage stayed low behind the cockpit, and even tapered downwards slightly at the rear. There was a slight blind spot on either side where the wings lifted up and out, but the overall visibility was excellent. The raised wing configuration even gave the pilot a clear view of the low angles behind the hull, where a lot of pilots liked to attack from, and with the cockpit perched so far forward, she felt like she could almost lean over and look down beneath the nose.
"Roomy in here," Tahiri noted on the comm, sounding pleasantly surprised. "At least we can get shot down in comfort."
"Let's see what they've got," she answered, powering up the simulator. The pre-flight routine was simple and practical, just a row of switches beneath the forward situation screen. The deep sound of the drive was reassuringly rugged, suggesting reliability and a useful amount of power. The provision of a two-handed control column rather than a flight-stick made clear that this was an Imperial plane, but she'd flown similar controls aboard the Falcon since childhood. The stars outside the cockpit looked just like the real thing.
The strangest thing for Jaina was the lack of comm feedback from an astromech socketed behind the cockpit. The Preybird used a built-in navacomp, trading the flexibility of an astro-droid for simplicity and dedicated processing power. Spanker, her R7 unit, was reduced to scooting around the apartment, mixing drinks, tidying up their bondage toys, and occasionally slicing into the computer and ordering inappropriate holoporn. Tahiri had suggested more than once that they should turn him into a trash compactor.
She blinked, as a holographic text scrolled up in front of the stars outside her cockpit, announcing the mission the simulator had been programmed for.
A rogue faction of Jedi Knights have created warrior clones of Jaina Solo and Tahiri Veila, she read. Your mission as Steel Flight is to fight your way through two wing-pairs of clones flying XJ-series fighters, then shoot down a third pair flying StealthX assassination ships before they can destroy the archaeological camp investigating ancient Jedi ruins on Dantooine.
"Is this a standard training simulation?" Tahiri asked, sounding slightly hurt.
"I'll make enquiries," Jaina answered, pressing her lips together in a line. "At least we'll know exactly how well we'd do in X-wings, if the simulations are anything close to accurate."
"All those combat sims that Jag and his pilots used to challenge you to," Tahiri countered. "Now you know what they were doing. They probably just added me just to get your standard-issue Imperial recruit riled-up and righteously aggressive."
"Quiet." She didn't want to ask Tahiri just how much time she'd spent in Imperial flight sims when she'd been Jacen's liaison with the Moffs. "We have four X-wings on our twelve."
The first two X-wings moved ahead to engage them, and scissored wide. "I have the leader," Jaina clipped, turning her fighter to face off against the simulated opponent based on her. She found herself lifting her eyebrows at how quickly the Preybird turned—not as fast as a TIE, but quicker than anything with a sane snubfighter design had any right to. The acceleration wasn't quite as fast as she was used to, but the redline felt pretty equal to her X-wing.
She turned her fighter up on one wing to dodge the first round of quad-laser fire from the X-wing, gaining a little height as the manoeuvre proved quicker than expected, then grinned wickedly, and looped around to show the simulator's imitation Jaina her tail. She watched her shield indicator as she took a couple of glancing hits, but wasn't worried if the AI was doing what she'd have done, and using short burst from the guns to avoid wasting a torpedo or depleting her shield energy.
The AI made the mistake of trying to get in on her six, manoeuvring for the spot she'd scored half her kills from. Jaina smiled thinly, and let loose with a concussion missile from the aft-firing launcher.
Preybirds were unusual enough that she hadn't known about the aft launcher until she took delivery of one. And her AI opponent responded exactly the way she would have. The X-wing snap-rolled to avoid the projectile, probably expecting a proton torpedo with limited range and manoeuvring capability—and the concussion missile switched course, and slammed into the side of the fuselage somewhere between the cockpit and the engines.
"You cheated," Tahiri objected . She'd taken down her own quarry with laser fire, in a tight turning fight somewhere on the left.
"Exploiting the advantages of the design," Jaina countered, her dark eyes hunting her screens, and the stars, for the second pair of X-wings. High, off to port, working round their rear. "I'll take the next one with my guns."
"You mind if I join in?" Tahiri asked.
"Take the lead," Jaina answered, throttling back. They'd never really flown together as pilots in the same formation, which seemed bizarre, but Tahiri had a predator's lean instincts, and Jaina found her wing a comfortable place to be. The Preybird's remarkably quick manoeuvrability and their shared Force-instincts meant that they could dance around each other's jets in a close formation, always watching each other's back.
The two X-wings tried to take them one-on-one, but they simply didn't have the same agility, and as they looped round again for another pass, they underestimated the Preybird's slightly hesitant mid-range acceleration, so that the one point of obvious weakness compared to Rebel fighters became a paradoxical advantage—they came in too sharp on the turn, and that let the girls drop back on their tails again.
Perhaps they'd have been even more deadly flying TIEs together, but TIEs didn't have the same long-range punch in their lasers, or the shields that let them fight head-to head. Tahiri claimed the leader this time, though Jaina's shooting took out the shields, and then they closed in on the final plane.
Two against one, the energy storm of laser bolts from their wingtip guns simply tore the simulated fighter apart.
"Okay," Tahiri breathed. "We just vaped pretty good AI versions of ourselves in top-line X-wings. I'm impressed."
Jaina nodded, signalling her agreement in the Force. "We should have sex more often. Let's go save some imaginary scientists."
They couldn't see any trace of the StealthX fighters in the sky around them, but the system was a big place, the StealthX was very hard to spot in the deep black, and they knew how to slip in unnoticed. They'd even given presentations on their tactics to the Empire.
Thankfully, they knew where their opponents had to go to to complete their mission—the archaeologists' camp beside the old Jedi enclave on the surface of Dantooine. So they just had to get there ahead of them. The spaceframe of Jaina's fighter buffeted convincingly as they dropped down from starry space to evening sky, but once she was flying in clean air, the Preybird was amazingly quick, and even more responsive—in atmospheric mode, the engines were fed by powerful compressors in the sides of the fuselage, with narrow intake vents behind the cockpit, rather than through the blunt circular cowlings which the X-wing used—the more sophisticated system provided extra thrust, while the streamlined cross-section was more naturally aerodynamic. She found a grin. Fighting the X-wings had been about tactics and manoeuvres, exploiting their new planes' unusual range of performance with a strange mix of natural flying instinct and methodical Imperial discipline. In sub-orbital flight, however, the Preybird was easily the best fighter she'd ever flown.
And compared with a StealthX? Well, even Jaina would admit that the Jedi plane was a sluggish flying brick with strike-foils, a plane that demanded the disciplining of the Jedi pilot's reactions to exploit the tricksy manoeuvring qualities of unstable aerodynamics and add accurate aiming to the advantages of sensor-passive tactics. The Preybirds might have had some trouble in a space fight, but even in the dark blue evening sky, the two of them had no trouble picking up the contrails of their opponents with the naked eye, and closed to kill with guns.
She supposed that TIE Fighters, relying on sensor guidance from a flight control officer aboard a command ship, might have had more trouble picking them up.
Even so, Jaina was mildly appalled how easily the leading StealthX went down under Tahiri's guns. Perhaps that was just bad estimation of the type's combat performance—the first StealthX the Empire had got hold of was probably the one which they'd acquired along with her, and just begun dismantling on her orders. But they had enough telemetry from the various encounters they'd had with Star Destroyers.
She hesitated before drilling a gratuitous torpedo through the cockpit of the second Jedi fighter, and simply shot out the power core and the astromech, watching the fragile spaceframe disintegrate. She'd understood, intellectually, that special sensor-baffling materials didn't have armour protection, and that the idea behind the StealthX was simple—don't get hit.
But watching the reality of a takedown, even in a sim, was sobering.
She laughed, as she saw a holographic copy of Tahiri on a parachute, shaking her fist at them.
"Okay," Tahiri said, sounding cheerful. "You convinced me. I like the Empire's new version of us better."
"I do too," Jaina breathed, pulling the control yoke back, smiling as Tahiri followed her into the sky. "I do too."
There'd be a time to refine their tactics later, and figure out how much damage the Preybird's rugged but relatively lightly-armoured fuselage could take. Perhaps some one-on-one dogfights might be fun. But for now, they'd worked up an appetite for brunch.
The sequel that one of you surprised me by asking for. For author's notes, see the end of the first chapter of the original story - s/13303514/1/Imperial-Space