Jaina watched as Tahiri wandered back into the bedroom, naked from the collar down, but carrying a flat rectangular device in one hand, which looked a little like one of the little tabletop heaters they used to keep take-out dishes warm—black with a flash of chrome laid across the top. She frowned as she recognized the portable holoprojector grid—a classic piece of Imperial technology, simple to build and uncompromising in functionality, but stylish and sexy to look at.

There was an alchemy to the combination of shiny metal grid and curve-edged black plastoid base that was almost irresistible.

She lifted her eyes, glanced up questioningly at Tahiri—then blushed, and lowered her gaze again.

Tahiri flashed a grin. "Incoming transmission for the Grand Moff," she said, and laid the holoprojector on the rippled sheet in front of Jaina.

"Is my personal comm setting set up properly?" Jaina asked.

One good thing about being the Empire's head of state was the protocol that insisted you used a scaled-up head-and-shoulders image when you were on the comm. Until she was installed in the top job, she'd always thought the rule was weird—Admiral Pellaeon had never indulged the tradition, and she'd been quietly annoyed by her ex-husband's enthusiasm for the option.

But when you were liable to be locked in bondage at awkward times of day, and your bodyguard... girlfriend insisted on you taking important comm calls wearing nothing except the shackles, the Imperial setting was one way to provide a sort of modesty.

So long as she could trust Tahiri to actually keep her on the Imperial setting, anyway. She'd held an hour-long conference call with d'Ashewl, Tagge and Sacker, the three Moffs who had become her informal inner cabinet, without realising that Tahiri had switched the display to the normal setting, giving them a quarter-sized full-body image of her.

As the Moffs said, the view was nothing they hadn't seen before. Admittedly, that was primarily because of the sex-tapes her ex-husband and his friends had made, but somehow, she'd ended up in a sort-of relationship with all three of them as well.

D'Ashewl, the head of Imperial Intelligence, was dangerously handsome and effortlessly dominant. Sacker, the military governor of the capital, was the sort of hard-drinking, take-charge lesbian fighter ace she fell in love with far more often than a straight girl should, and Tagge, the only one she hadn't actually had sex with yet, was a straight-backed Imperial stereotype who flattered several of her private kinks.

"Appropriate display settings?" Jaina repeated. "Tahiri?"

"Always," Tahiri smirked, leaning over Jaina's naked body and playing with the long cylindrical wrist cuffs that were being used to fasten her hands behind her back. Although they were currently paired with some mag-locked connecting chains and a matching pair of ankle-bracelets as the basis of a very sexy and restrictive Gammorrean-cuff, they were officially her favourite pair of chrono/comlink bracelets—expensive ones with a built-in holographic interface that could be used to control other comm equipment.

Jaina was sure there was a simpler way to activate her holoprojector.

"So who am I being inappropriate with today?" she asked, wriggling a little. She supposed she could pass off the chrome durasteel collar she was wearing as decorative jewelry—a relatively slim shackle, only two or three centimeters tall, with the Imperial badge embossed on the front. "Sacker? Flennic? Tenel Ka?"

"No, this one's from Rebel space," Tahiri smiled, as she pressed a code sequence on Jaina's cuff. "There." A quarter-sized holo-image of Han Solo flickered into view on the display grid.

"Hi dad," Jaina said, with a rueful smile. "You caught me in bed."

"Hey, Janey," her father grinned. She didn't get the sense that he could see what she was wearing. "How's my favourite daughter today?"

"Usual stuff," she said, stifling a yawn. "Empire to run. Coronation to arrange. For some reason they want to elect me first."

"Your mom said," Han nodded. "I don't understand how the Empire's suddenly interested in democracy, and I don't think she does either."

"Makes three of us," Jaina nodded. "I keep meaning to ask the Moffs, but there's always other stuff. TIE Fighter procurement. Fleet logistics. Piracy and smuggling." She smiled. "Your kind of stuff, Dad. You should come out here for a visit."

"I'm not very good at socialising with Moffs," Han shrugged. Jaina smiled. She'd heard his old war stories a hundred times, and she'd been surprised to read the Imperial reports, and discovered that most of them were true.

"They're better than they used to be," Tahiri interjected, off-camera.

"Yeah, well, Jag was always a piece of Sith. And that sleazeball friend of his, Vit Reige."

Jaina laughed. Even Tahiri managed a smile, which reached her eyes this time.

"Are they giving you enough free time?" Han asked. When he said free, Tahiri shimmered with amusement in the Force, as if she'd almost laughed aloud, and began to circle her fingers slowly on Jaina's naked ass. "You haven't asked me to source spare parts for any new ship since all this kriff blew up."

"The Empire gave me a Preybird," she smiled. "Just arrived today."

"Mazzic always said those things were hot-rod," Han agreed.

"And based on what I've seen so far, he was right," she smiled. "They're also wanting me to qualify on the Imperial shuttle."

"I don't think I've been aboard one of those old things since we sneaked into Endor on the Tydirium," Han smiled. "They're pretty easy to handle, though."

"You've mentioned," Jaina agreed. She suspected her father would be pleased to know that the Empire's shuttle crews were still washouts from the TIE Pilot program, and still merited a corresponding lack of respect from combat flyers like Moff Sacker.

A noise somewhere off-camera made her father turn his head. "Kriff," he said. "Call back later."

"Another day on the Falcon," Jaina smiled. "Love you dad. Love mom too."

The image flicked to static, and Tahiri flicked the switch that powered down the transmitter.

Jaina blinked. "Weird," she said, shaking her head a little, the tips of her hair dancing against her jawline.

"I know, Grand Moff," Tahiri said, patting her playfully on the head. "Now let's get back to doing normal things, submissive-Jedi-X-wing-pilot-who-agreed-to-become-the-Empire's-head-of-state."

"Normal?" Jaina asked.

Tahiri laughed. "By your standards, anyway..."

Alert readers might notice that I've replaced Moff Burren from the original Imperial Space with Moff d'Ashewl. I'll probably go back and change the character name throughout, but I'm still trying to decide for sure.

The role in question was originally written as a homage to someone else's decidedly NSFW fanfic, but I'm not sure I can really mention that on this site, so I opted to use a substitute character, and as the storyline progressed, Burren seemed a less appropriate placeholder, hence the change of name (a nod to Agent d'Ashewl from Scoundrels, but the chronology doesn't really allow them to be the same individual).