Silence (Bette)

[Tannis V'larr]

Seventeen months after the Battle of Endor

The VSD Termagant was equipped with a small forward hangar separate from its main fighter hangar. It primarily serviced shuttles and other support craft -- any time VIPs visited the Victory-class Star Destroyer, their transports were customarily received there. The hangar had its own flight crews, support systems, and supply holds, and its bays were easily cordoned off to maintain privacy and confidentiality where necessary.

Currently, bays thirteen through fifteen of the forward hangar were playing host to a trio of highly exclusive guests.

--

Commander Thaddeus Grisham of Shadow Squadron was even more tightly wound than usual. It could have had something to do with the fact that he'd just in the last week been admitted into a military secret with Level Rho classification, a tall order even for a Commander. Or it could have been because he knew one of his lieutenants was in on it first.

"Now, everybody pay attention. The brass up at R&D will be watching us like hawk-bats on this one, so we can't afford any screw-ups. We're finally taking our new blackbirds on a test run."

He prowled up to the briefing room vidscreen, which jumped from its display of the Termagant idly orbiting Garos IV to a spit of a star system with a corona of dust and asteroids.

"This is the Alnitak system -- if you can call it a system. Nothing but rocks and gas, scatters all long-range sensors and communications. About seventy million klicks out from the star is a smuggling depot -- the Rebels have been running supplies through there for years. It's never been strategically important enough to warrant a strike. It's a target of opportunity that won't attract much attention. Perfect honeymoon spot for our new Wraiths.

"We're going in two flights of three fighters: a Wraith and two Defenders apiece. Our objective is to jump in and neutralize all targets of opportunity as quietly as possible. I will lead flight Alpha on a strike against the depot. Commander Davis will take flight Bravo and track down a Rebel transport we vectored into Alnitak just hours ago. Here's the drill. The Defenders will hang back in the thickest parts of the dust clouds where they can't be detected. Meanwhile, the Wraiths will take a few flybies of the targets and do some recon -- see how good these new stealth systems work. If all goes well, the Wraiths will initiate the attack. The Defenders will stand by to mop up anything that's left over.

"Now this is important. We've chosen this system because there's no chance of a distress signal reaching Rebel ears. Our Wraiths have to remain a secret. That means NO ONE but Shadow Squadron makes it out of this system alive. Resistance will be very light; a couple laser cannons on the depot and two A-Wings at the most babysitting the transport. The Rebels have no reason to expect an attack, or they wouldn't use this depot. You shouldn't have any trouble wiping them out. If we're lucky, we'll be able to send our eggheads in a recovery craft to pick up the black boxes, find out exactly what the Rebels see before we vape them."

The Commander closed down the vidscreen. "Once we hit the system, we maintain radio silence as long as we can. Anyone blows our cover, there won't be anything left to court-martial when I'm through with you. Secrecy is our top priority. All coordinates and contact codes are in your ship's computer. Any questions? Good. Now shut up and suit up. We launch in twenty minutes."

[Bette Davis]

Bette whistled at Tannis as he pulled on his flightsuit, more to see what his reaction would be than anything else. Studious on the best of occasions, the half-breed was ...in the zone. He didn't seem to have heard her whistle, so she shrugged and finished suiting up.

Sidling up to him, flight helmet in hand, she leaned over his shoulder as he fixed something on his boots. "These Wraiths aren't going to fall apart mid-flight, are they?"

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis flinched lightly at the sudden intrusion into his pre-flight ritual.

"I would hardly think so," he replied briskly. "These craft have already completed a full series of flight and performance trials, including hull stress and hyperdrive endurance--"

It was only then he realized she was being ironic.

"That is to say, no. Barring pilot error."

He hefted his survival pack onto his back and took his helmet under his arm, ready to head to the hangar. "You did review the performance statistics I forwarded, correct?"

[Bette Davis]

"Of course," she retorted, walking beside him as they made their way to the hangar. "Look, I'm not going to crash your baby into the side of this transport we're going after, if that's what you're concerned about."

At least, that wasn't in the plan. She grinned a little evilly, and picked up her pace to get the first look at the two prototypes.

[Tannis V'larr]

The hangar deck was dominated by a pair of predatory, carbon-black fighters on support skids -- sleek, canopied cockpit modules that marked a departure from the familiar ball-and-wing configuration, slanted, dagger-shaped wing panels, and robust, elongated fuselages that contained powerful engines and the all-important hibridium cloaks. The TIE Wraith seemed almost a living thing full of coiled energy and implicit threat, like a viper waiting to strike at an unwary prey.

The tech crews had dollied them out from their individual berths and were running the final system checks while the pumps churned fresh fuel into the Wraiths' reactors. The external weapons hardpoints were carrying a full load -- two medium anti-capital torpedoes on the undersides of the wings, two cluster concussion missile packs on top. This mission had been drawn up as much to test the Wraiths' combat effectiveness as to test their stealth.

Tannis stepped lightly around Bette as she paused to give the fighters an appraising look. "I know you have an affinity for referring to your ships by callsign. I am told the test crews called these two Vornskr and Shadowhunter."

[Bette Davis]

"Sweet." She ran a hand along the smooth hull before a tech shooed her away, and looked over her shoulder at V'larr. "I'll give you one thing, they're pretty."

The canopy was pulled forward, and Bette climbed up the ladder that a tech had rolled up to Shadowhunter for the pilots. She found that there was plenty of room for her small frame in the forward seat, and pulled her helmet on over her hair. "I guess we'll find out if they fly or not sooner rather than later."

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis settled into the sensor tech station, which was mounted just behind and a little above the pilot's seat, giving both pilots a clear view out the canopy. The workstations were deceptively similar; they were modular enough that one crew member could take over the other's duties in an emergency, but the Wraith's sensitive systems required both a pilot and a sensory engineer to run at maximum efficacy. As the man who had designed most of those systems, Tannis was probably the most qualified officer in the Empire to operate them.

Underneath his implaccable Sikarran veneer, Tannis was undeniably nervous. He didn't doubt the fighter's capabilities, or his own, but there were more variables in the mission plan than he cared for. The Empire had committed a significant sum of credits to a project developed by a junior officer -- if it was perceived to be a failure in any way, they wouldn't spend very long looking for a scapegoat.

But there was nothing to be served by pursuing that line of thought. As a coverall-clad tech sealed the canopy, Tannis began the startup sequence -- it was a tandem effort as they alternately powered up the main reactor, guidance systems, flight control, communications, life support -- the checklist went on for another five minutes. That figure would obviously have to be shaved down.

At last, the fuel umbillicals fell away, and the flight crew cleared the hangar deck for launch as the warning Klaxons pulsed outside. The space doors yawned open, and only a blue haze of the atmospheric force field separated the hangar from uncountable lightyears of black vacuum.

"This is Termagant control to Shadows One and Two. You are cleared for launch."

"Acknowledged, Termagant control," Grisham replied. "Shooter, follow my lead."

The other Wraith floated off its landing skids and gently passed through the field into space. You couldn't ask for a more cautious, by-the-book test launch.

[Bette Davis]

Bette found the Wraith's controls quite agreeable, and launch went perfectly. She half expected something to explode before they left the Termagant, but knowing the Professor's anal personality, the mission would most likely go by without a hitch.

"So far so good," she said to Tannis, and the ship accelerated, chasing after Commander Grisham's Wraith. "Here come the Defenders." The four Defs launched from the ISD floating in space behind them, and formed up around the two experimental crafts.

"Check your vectors - we want these jumps to go off without a hitch, Shadows."

"Yes Dad," muttered Bette, but only Tannis could hear her. She toggled the comm to the shared channel. "Jump coordinates are plugged in. Shadows Eleven and Twelve, on my mark." The Defenders flew just behind Shadowhunter, and after a few moments all three winked out of real space.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis couldn't shake the odd feeling of being a passenger instead of the pilot -- he'd flown in two-seaters before, of course, but never for a combat mission.

Hyperspace was, as always, uneventful. All the Wraith's systems had already gone through a full hyperdrive shakedown, and she had performed admirably; her only serious shortcoming was that she could not jump into hyperlight while the cloak was engaged. Fortunately, the dust halo around Alnitak would adequately mask what would otherwise be the noisy arrival of six Imperial fighters.

It was a short jump. Within fifteen minutes, the Wraith dropped into realspace with stomach-jolting alacrity. Before them was a tired-looking red star whose dull light made the smears of dust and gases look like blood-clouded waters.

Tannis quickly went to work. "I am bringing the cloak online. Stand by..."

The light in the cockpit flickered as the power draw shifted dramatically. Shields and the hyperdrive shut down while, in the engine compartment, the hibridium device hummed to life. It took a few moments to warm up--

The hibridium cloak, developed by Grand Admiral Batch, had one major flaw: the cloaking field was a double-blind. It made the ship and pilot invisible to the outside universe, but the outside universe was just as invisible to the pilot. In the Wraith's case, however, that wasn't a problem.

The engine indicators turned blue. "The cloak is operating at peak efficiency. Engine emissions... completely eliminated. Sensor systems operating. Weapons systems operating. We are in stealth mode, Commander."

With the engines cloaked, the Wraith had no power signature for enemy scanners to lock onto, and her sensor-scattering hull plates made her mass very difficult to read as well. She was not invisible, but, for all intents and purposes, she was unnoticeable -- at most, an anomalous burst of cosmic radiation. For decades the Empire had invested in symbolic weapons -- the Super Star Destroyer, the Death Star, even the ubiquitous white Stormtrooper armor were all designed to be seen and feared. The Wraith would teach the Rebels to fear what they could not see.

"The Rebel transport's last known coordinates are in the navigational computer," Tannis said. And then, in a momentary lapse in professional stolidity, he asked, "How does she handle?"

[Bette Davis]

"Like a drunken bantha. Really. Who designed this piece of dren?" Bette chuckled at the indignant sound that came from her co-pilot before he realized she was joking, and added, "Everything seems to be working well. So far."

She waved out the cockpit at the other Wraith, and Deathstick dipped his wings before turning the fighter around and heading towards the planet. "Say goodbye to the kids, we're going to have some fun." Shooter grinned, and Shadowhunter peeled away from the escorts, leaving the Defenders in the dustcloud where the Rebels would not detect them. "We've got us a freighter to catch."

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis stifled a sarcastic response which he knew would only encourage her. Sometimes Bette could be so irritatingly... human.

Even though it was significantly larger than most TIEs, the V38 boasted more overall power and even better acceleration than the TIE Defender. However, with the cloak sapping over twenty-five percent the Vyper reactor's available output, the Wraith under cloak was significantly hampered -- just shy of a standard TIE/ln, not quite as bad as a bomber.

But Bette seemed to have acclimated well to the shift in performance as she chased down the freighter's projected flight plan. Meanwhile, Tannis sifted through the sensor readings of weeks-old ion trails and EM interference. There was an art to reading passive sensor input, especially at these ranges.

"I believe I have some comm. traffic," he said. "Trying to resolve it... it is unencrypted."

He piped the data into the ship's vox -- it was static, mostly, but the chatter was unmistakeable.

"The Twirling Lekku? Yeah, I've been there. Hottest club this side of Wild Space, if you ask me."

"I hear something went down there recently... Spec ops stuff. Frell, I wouldn't mind being stationed there for a while."

"Weather sucks, but you can't argue with the view."

"You know, my sister went to school on Felucia... studying exobotany or something like that. Says her roommate was a dancer down there."

"Seriously? Think you could introduce me?"

Tannis switched it off -- he had the data he needed. "I've quadrangulated their position," he said. "Bearing... one-six-three mark four by oh-one-oh mark seven. Range, five hundred million kilometers. I believe it is our target."

[Bette Davis]

"Altering course and speed to intercept." Bette actually slowed down a bit, not wanting to rush headlong into a relatively unknown situation with an untested fighter. Plus, she'd been going too fast to start with. "All power levels are within acceptable parameters."

In a moment or two they would see just how good the cloak system that V'larr had developed was. Or wasn't. Shadowhunter got just within visual range of the freighter and it's two escorts - strikes. The X-Wing pilots had been the comm chatter they had picked up earlier. Escort duty... the boredom was probably killing them. Bette put that thought firmly out her mind, and focused on the ships, rather than the occupants.

"Hope you're strapped in, Professor. Here goes." She primed weapons so they would be ready when they were needed, and the TIE Wraith accelerated towards the freighter.

[Tannis V'larr]

The reserve gauges dipped as the Wraith's fire control and tracking systems came to life -- this was as much power as she would reasonably ever put out while under cloak short of an emergency burn or the actual instant of discharging her weapons. The Vyper reactor, a juggernaut among small-craft power plants, had hit its full stride. If the Rebel sensors were going to pick them up, now would be the time.

"Yeah, dream on. The Mon Cal fleet isn't heading anywhere near Felucia."

"Well, maybe I've got connections -- woah, what's that?"

"Huh?"

"I... dunno. Radiation flash or something."

"So there's isotopes of banthadrenium or some other damned thing in this cloud."

"Yeah... looks like it's gone now."

"Target locks on all three bogeys," Tannis said. "We are ready to fire, Commander."

[Bette Davis]

Bette was impressed. So far, everything had gone off without a hitch. "All right, make sure you take some notes, Professor. This is how you take out three ships before anyone has time to think." He hated her cavalier attitude, and she enjoyed being as brash as possible when around him. It made for some interesting chemistry between the two pilots.

Shadowhunter locked onto the freighter's communcations array, and Shooter depressed the button that released one of her two torpedoes. It would do severe damage to the Rebel freighter and render them unable to send a distress call. For the moment the two strikes would be too busy trying to defend the larger ship to send a distress call themselves. To the Rebels, these three ships would simply cease to exist.

Torpedo away, the comm chatter V'larr was monitoring suddenly escalated from the mundane to something significantly more familiar. "What the frell?" "Where did that come from?!" "I've got visual! Black bogey, three o'clock!"

Bette jigged the Wraith to port, hoping the strikes would lose their visual contact against the blackness of space, and then opened fire with the forward lasers. The first strike was attempting to come around to intercept her before she could get closer to the already listing freighter, but she dumped enough firepower onto the X-wing's shields that they failed spectacularly. Moments later the strike exploded, but the second had used the distraction to get in behind the Shadowhunter.

[Tannis V'larr]

Red cannon fire splattered all around them -- even with a visual on his enemy, the X-Wing pilot couldn't bring his targeting assistance to bear on the Shadowhunter, forcing him to aim by sight alone. But even a lucky shot would be dangerous -- the Wraith had no shields while under stealth, and her hull plates were optimized for turning sensor beams rather than plasma.

A brilliant red contrail flashed by them to starboard, hundreds of meters off-target. A heat-seaking proton torpedo -- a classic fire-and-forget weapon, typically deadly in a close-range chase. It had missed hopelessly, meaning the Wraith's heat profile was too low to show up on the missile's onboard scanners. Impressive.

But it was time to end the pursuit. Tannis thumbed one of the triggers on his flight yoke. "Deploying a flashpack."

A small device, not much larger than a closed fist, tumbled out of Shadowhunter's stern and, a split-second later, erupted into a blinding nova across the visible light spectrum. When chasing a bogey on visual alone, you had to squint in the dark -- Tannis had just turned a floodlight into the Rebel pilot's eyes. The strike veered off its course, but the damage was done, and he'd lost the Wraith.

"At your leisure, Commander."

[Bette Davis]

"Right," she replied tersely, satisfied as the torpedo that had missed them found the damaged freighter and smashed into it. Time to see what the Wraith could really do.

Bette pulled the nose of the fighter upwards, the inertial dampners straining as the Wraith exectuted a tight, upside down manuever that landed them behind the blinded strike. Still saving her last torpedo for the already failling freighter, Shooter overloaded the strike's shields with standard laser fire, and then sent a concussion missile after the Rebel. The engines blew up, and Bette flew underneath the silent fireball.

"I'll give you this much, Professor, this is fun." She grinned.

[Tannis V'larr]

It was a gutsy and satisfying maneuver. Shadowhunter was no Defender in terms of agility, but that didn't matter as much when the enemy couldn't see you.

"You are certainly giving the brass a good show," he replied with as close as he ever came to a smile. He wondered idly how Grisham's strike was going.

Bette swung the Wraith around again, bringing the freighter squarely in the center of the forward canopy. The two torpedoes had more than crippled her - her engines were pulverized, and her cargo contents had spewed into space like the entrails of a disembowled beast. A few well-placed strikes would finish all her troubles and leave the black box in perfect condition for R & D's techs to pick over.

But then the power monitor caught Tannis's eye. "There's an energy spike in the freighter -- looks like--"

A node on the freighter's underside pulsed innocuously, and all hell broke loose on Shadowhunter's systems.

Every readout fuzzed with angry-looking static, and a few of the smaller diodes in the cockpit burst. Both pilots were assaulted by a momentary squeal of feedback in their headsets.

"...an EMP!" Tannis's hands flew over the engineering interface. "Reinitializing our systems... We have weapons, propulsion, no shields, no target lock... Commander, our cloak has failed!"

[Bette Davis]

"Frell -!" Davis gripped the flightstick, and forced herself to relax while V'larr worked in the station behind her. "They still can't send any messages..." Her eyes narrowed, and Shooter aimed squarely at the center of the drifting freighter.

The last torpedo shot off silently, and blew apart the side of the freighter. Secondary explosions continued the torpedo's dirty work, and Bette turned her attention to the sensors. "Cloak or no cloak, there's no one here to tell anyone about us. Get me shields back, Lieutenant, we have a rendevous to make."

[Tannis V'larr]

Just like that, their mission was accomplished. Certainly not as cleanly as Tannis would have liked, but the whole skirmish had taken barely forty seconds -- admirable for a lone ship against an enemy freighter and her fighter escort.

Repairing the shields was not a particularly demanding task, so he set one part of his brain to that task while the rest puzzled over another. "It seems the cloak is not as well-shielded as I had thought. Perhaps the charge of the EMP was carried through the exhaust vanes in the radiator panels..."

He fell silent again as he ran the shield generators through their start-up sequence.

"Deflector shields coming online again, Commander. I would rather not try to reinitialize the cloak until the damage can be assessed. It is a delicate piece of equipment. Stand by for navigational systems..."

[Bette Davis]

She drummed her fingers on the console in front of her, content to let the more than capable pilot behind her worry out all the repairs on his baby. "As long as Commander Grisham has done his job, we won't have to worry about being spotted by anyone. If he hasn't, then all the blame goes to him anyway."

Maintaining comm silence meant that they wouldn't know about the success or lack thereof of Alpha flight until they all made it back to the jump point. Shields came up just in time, as bits of debris from the second X-wing floated by. Bette carefully edged the fighter backwards along their current vector, unwilling to stray too far from the destroyed ships without an operating navigational system.

"Navigation online."

"Thank you, Lieutenant." She hesitated, then dialed the sublights up, taking the Wraith back towards the dust cloud and the rest of Bravo flight.

[Tannis V'larr]

As Bette steered them for their flightmates, Tannis continued salvaging the systems the EMP had overloaded -- targeting control, active scanners, communications, computer guidance. Surely it was plain bad luck that the freighter captain had an EMP generator at all. Such a device would blind his allies just as easily as his enemies. It was fortunate that Bette's first torpedo had already hulled the transport so she couldn't escape.

"The EMP aside, I think the attack went as well as we could have hoped," Tannis mused. "Even if we cannot recover the freighter's flight recorder, I believe we have gathered more than sufficient data to consider this mission a successful test. My congratulations."

It may have seemed an impertinent thing to say to his superior, though Tannis was one of a handful of official "experts" evaluating the Wraiths' performance under Shadow Squadron's care. But there was also gratitude in his voice, if you knew what to listen for. Bette's skill had allowed the Shadowhunter to give a very good account of herself.

[Bette Davis]

Bette smiled in response, but Tannis couldn't see her face. "Of course, an EMP would have disabled any fighter, not just the Wraith. I don't think that simply because an ion blast will fry your electricals makes a ship a failure." That line of reasoning made her wonder what an ion blast would do to the Wraith, and decided she didn't want to find out. There was a lot of sensitive equipment strapped to her butt, and the thought of it overloading was ...uncomfortable.

The saftey of the dust cloud loomed ahead, but there was a flicker on the sensors. A red light started to blink silently. "Uh oh." Bette gritted her teeth. "I've got something big dropping out of hyperspace right on top of us!"

A smallish capital ship ripped its way into real space off their port bow, and Shooter veered away from it, punching up the sublights as high as they'd go. "Get me an emergency jump programmed!"

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis sprung into action. "Plotting... hyperdrive power is still not available! We need to take evasive... Oh, gods..."

The Sikarran half-breed rarely emited anything resembling an oath, but what his sensor readouts were telling him chilled even his copper-based blood.

The comm. crackled to life. "...repeat, can anyone hear me? This is the Corellian starliner Mercury Swan requesting assistance from any imperial or allied vessel... Attacked by pirates, forced into an emergency jump. We've got wounded on board..."

"Bogey is a DY-1500 commercial civilian transport," Tannis reported. "Passenger compliment of two hundred fifty. Their navigational systems and deflectors are badly damaged. Reactors near critical. Numerous life signs aboard, Commander."

[Bette Davis]

Bette's mouth set in a firm line even as Shadowhunter continued to streak away from the wounded vessel. "We can't hear them, because we don't exist, Lieutenant. Get me the hyperdrive back if you can."

They could make a small emergency jump out of the system and then jump back to the Termagant, the Mercury Swan would be none the wiser. Grisham could collect the rest of Bravo flight on his way out if they never showed. She couldn't risk trying to communicate with the Defenders waiting on them, not with the starliner behind them in prime position to pick up any comm chatter.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis stared at the sensor readings he'd learned to read so well. In his mind's eye he could see the ruined starliner slowly spinning, a helpless hulk like the freighter they'd just decimated, leaking a volatile combination of fuel and oxygen.

"Is anyone there? We've got children aboard, for gods' sakes..."

The Sikarran halfbreed hesitated -- one hand over the emergency beacon, one over the navigational controls.

[Bette Davis]

Bette roughly clicked off the comm, silencing the distress call. "Snap out of it, Lieutenant! If we get seen out here, you'll wish it was only your career that would be over." The concealing dust formation that hid the rest of Bravo flight was still several minutes away at full sublight.

If the Mercury Swan still had sensors - and they did, according to the readout she was getting - then the hotter they burned the easier it would be to see them. And if they were spotted....

"Tannis!" Bette twisted around to try to get her eyes on him. She couldn't. "I'm sure you'd rather we left those kids here than making me fly over there and vape them. If we get back to the Termagant we can alert the brass and a rescue team can be sent out."

It was far more likely that those at the top would simply come back and destroy the Swan. The Wraith was too top secret to risk anyone leaking news about it to the general public. She softened her tone, "The faster we get out of here, the better it'll be for these folks."

[Tannis V'larr]

Bette's was only one of the voices of reason cycling in Tannis's brain -- the pragmatic voice, the moral voice, the voice of duty -- all of them analyzing the situation from their respective angles, pursuing all forseeable eventualities. Most ended badly.

Two hundred fifty... Small compared to what other recent Imperial military projects had cost.

They wouldn't even be out here if not for the mission. The starliner would be at the mercy of the smugglers and Rebels.

Yet they were here. And that damned the Mercury Swan even more.

Eyes flickering between his two options, Tannis felt his hands move and act before his still-divided mind could intervene.

And his voice caught up shortly. "Hyperdrive is online. Coordinates plotted. We are ready to jump, Commander."

[Bette Davis]

She slapped the hyperdrive controls, the g-forces momentarily pressing the two pilots back into their seats. After a few moments they reverted back to realspace, and Tannis silently ran another system check while Bette scanned the area. Nothing. Thank the gods, if there were any.

The second jump back to the Termagant was plotted in more silence, and Shadowhunter eased back into hyperspace. Bette absently drummed her fingers on the console again. "Got anything planned for after the mission, V'larr?"

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis was quiet for several moments, staring blankly into the cycling vortex before them.

"Compiling the mission data... correlating with the data from previous field tests... drafting my report... conducting simulations based on actual flight and performance models..."

[Bette Davis]

Obsessing over the Mercury Swan and busying myself with paperwork. Bette could read between the lines. At least, she thought she could. "I was thinking about hitting the officer's lounge and having a beer. Or five."

She offered the viewscreen in front of her a wry smile. "Nothing like a little celebratory drinking after a job well done."

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis couldn't see the smile, but he could hear it in her voice. And he knew what she was trying to do.

"I appreciate the offer, Commander. But I'm afraid I don't drink."

[Bette Davis]

"So I've noticed." She frowned, "Why is that, exactly? Religious beliefs?"

Bette closed her eyes, leaning back in her seat. They had ten more minutes before the jump was over.

[Tannis V'larr]

"Biochemistry," Tannis replied. "Alcohol is toxic to my neurophysiology."

He resisted appending moreso than to humans'.

[Bette Davis]

"Oh." That sucked. For him, that is. Shooter gave up on small talk, and the duo traveled the rest of the way in silence.

The Wraith reverted to real space right on time, just beyond the Termagant. They were about twenty minutes ahead of schedule due to missing their rendevous with the rest of Alpha and Bravo group.

[Tannis V'larr]

A scant half-hour later, they had docked and disembarked. Bette dispatched an alert to command about the Swan -- from that point, it was someone else's responsibility.

Officially, anyway.

Grisham and the rest of the Shadows returned shortly afterward, and both Bette and Tannis endured some dubious glares and snide comments from the commander for having kicked it in early. And then they were turned loose. Some of the pilots were headed up to the officer's club to celebrate. Tannis, to no one's real surprise, opted out.

An hour later, he was sitting in his rack cross-checking the flight logs from both Wraiths, trying to determine why the cloak hadn't recovered from the freighter's EMP, when something came noisily through the barracks door.

[Bette Davis]

Bette tried to tiptoe into the barracks, but kicked someone's trunk as she came in the door and sent some hopefully non-destructable items crashing to the ground. Grabbing the bunk nearest her, she steadied herself, a bottle clutched in her free hand. She didn't have any glasses with her, but then she wasn't planning on sharing, so it didn't matter.

No one else was in their bunks yet, but tomorrow was a free day and most of the Shadows were going to burn the midnight oil. Midnight liquor, more like it. Well, except for V'larr. The Professor was in his rack surrounded by papers.

Lieutenant Commander Davis stumbled a little as she walked between the bunks towards the back of the room, where her rack was located. She'd already ingested enough alchohol for one night, and in a hurry too, but she had time for more, especially considering the news she'd recieved from Grisham about ten minutes ago. The Swan's reactor had gone critical before rescue crews could get to her, and the ship and all hands had been lost. Sitting on her bunk, she tipped the bottle up, looking at Tannis out of the corner of her eye.