CAP in Hand

[Jaden Luka]

Even after all these months serving aboard the Challenger, Jaden Luka still hadn't grown accustomed to the fact that he lived and worked aboard a relic from the Clone Wars: a ship that was older than he was. Despite the Bothans having their furry paws on her for twenty-five years, the ship still bore most of the hallmarks and sterotypical decor of it's original constructors, and it left Jaden feeling like he was walking through one of the sets from one of those cheesy old Seacrest VSD holomovies that the Galactic Republic's propoganda machine had churned out during the closing stages of the war.

The eponymous Seacrest had been a Victory Star Destroyer though, and as Jaden rounded a corner and passed through a final set of doors, he was presented with a spectacular visual reminder that the Challenger was of an entirely different class.

The flight deck was vast, filling the majority of the Venator Star Destroyer's inner space. Through the round-cornered portal directly ahead, Jaden could see similar forcefielded entrances into more landing berths, that made him think of some sort of strange, technological insect hive. Some of the berths stored the the half-dozen squadrons that the Challenger relied upon to defend the Wheel. Others held shuttles, civilian transports small enough to come aboard, or had been converted into additional cargo storage.

Jaden remembered an unsettling statistic. Before joining Rogue Squadron he had served aboard the Valiant; the gargantuan doors that could open the entire dorsal surface of the Challenger were longer than the Valiant, and with a few shifted bulkheads - and a big enough door - you could theoretically park her inside the flight deck.

And yet, by Star Destroyer standards, the Venator-class was still relatively short. An Imperator was almost the Valiant's length longer again than the Challenger. That was why Jaden always preferred spending battles in a starfighter rather than on a bridge: at least in a fighter, you expected enemy targets to dwarf your ship.

Still, there was no use dwelling on that now: he had more pressing things to worry about. Coming to a halt a few dozen meters back from the landing berth's entrance, he clasped his hands behind his back, and waited as two X-Wings in Rogue Squadron colours came in to land.

[Jamo Jakatta]

It felt odd, returning to roost in a star destroyer. No matter how many times he brought Rogue Nine to a halt on the ship's huge flight deck, that vague sense of unease never went away, not for Jamo at least. Endor had left him sour when it came to the warships that were the bread and butter of the Imperial fleet. He didn't show it, of course. That wasn't the Corellian way. When he popped the cockpit on Rogue Nine, Joker was all easy smiles and swagger. He tore off his helmet and scrubbed his hand through his sweat-damp hair before loosening the collar of his flight-suit.

A short distance away, Oisin Ocasta climbed out of Rogue Twelve. Ahead of their fighters, a familiar figure in uniform stood watching in silence as the deck crew stirred to life.

“Captain,” Jamo gave a short salute. “Come to take Rogue One for a spin? I've heard the ground crew say she's started gathering dust.”

[Jaden Luka]

Jaden's attempt to throw back a casual smile was a little tighter-lipped than he'd intended. Light-hearted and good-natured ribbing was the status quo for any fighter unit - hell, any military unit - in most services across the galaxy; but Jamo had struck a sore spot.

The Captain's astromech, Katie, had actually stopped talking to him: that's how long it had been since Jaden had been behind the controls of his X-Wing. Instead he'd been involved in coordinating air patrols, planning training exercises, supervising readiness drills. They'd started teaching the Jedi how to fly, and even some of the non-pilots from aboard the Rebel ships: right now the Wheel had plenty of birds, but not enough bodies to fly then.

He offered a shrug in the Corellian's direction. "I'm afraid I'm far too important for CAP duty, Lieutenant. I'm happy to leave that kind of mission to my junior officers."

[Oisin Ocasta]

Oisin clambered from his cockpit, a little more awkwardly than normal. He was the sort of slim human with limbs that seemed too skinny to actually support his weight, but due to a slight mis-positioning of one of the straps on his flight suit during the mission, he was now suffering from what felt like static running from his left calf downwards.

He'd planned to remain in his cockpit for a few extra minutes, so he could massage some sort of sensation back into his extremities. Unfortunately, the arrival of the Captain had thwarted that plan: Oisin was still technically on loan to Rogue Squadron, and brushing off the acting unit commander didn't seem like the best way of maintaining his assignment.

Escaping from his fighter required an extensive amount of visual scanning, given that his leg couldn't locate the ladder rungs with it's usual tactile sensors. Unfortunately, said leg wasn't all too happy about supporting his weight either, and three steps in it gave up, unceremoniously buckling under Oisin's weight.

Close enough to the ground, Oisin's functional foot managed to land on something solid, preventing him from a headlong descent towards the deck. Unfortunately his numb foot had twisted as he'd stumbled, and his standard issue flight boot had wedged itself within the ladder.

Limbs trapped in a not particularly comfortable pose, Oisin flashed a sheepish smile towards his squadmates.

"Hi, Captain," he added, with a slight nervous wave.

[Jamo Jakatta]

“Is that so.”

Jamo just grinned, half-glancing over his shoulders as he heard Oisin Ocasta's voice behind him. Ocasta had joined the squadron around about the time that Jaden had been loaned out to the Horizon as a training officer. In a tight spot, Jamo knew who he'd prefer to have on his wing – and it wasn't the gangly tangle of limbs currently spilling its way out of Rogue Twelve. He turned his attention back to the Captain.

“Just here to admire the view then, eh?”

[Jaden Luka]

"If I was here for the view," Jaden quipped, "I'd wait until Phoenix was flying CAP."

A smile lingered for a few moments; the Captain eventually brushed it off with a shrug. "Honestly, I'm just so damned bored up in the CIC. With the Colonel off on the Valiant trying to farm some decent pilots out of those nuggets who applied for flight training, he's had me pulling shifts on deck -"

He shuddered. "I'm relying on you, Joker - if I even think about accepting a fleet assignment, I need you to shoot me."

[Jamo Jakatta]

Jamo tucked his helmet under one arm as he watched the deck crew swarm on the two newly returned birds. The mechanics aboard the Challenger were old-hands when to servicing X-Wings but Jamo always felt a little pang of over-protective anxiety whenever they went to work on Rogue Nine.

“What is it you do up on deck, anyway? I mean, aside from polishing your pips?”

[Jaden Luka]

"Strip club," Jaden answered, without a second's hesitation. "The Tyrant only ever hangs out on the bridge, so Pressly figured he could get away with turning it into an exclusive Bridge Officers' Club. We've got some plush velvet carpets, a couple of poles rigged up in the console pits..."

He trailed off and sighed. "Honestly? The place is pretty much a civvie control tower. We've got people relaying nav data to the freighters and transports to keep them in formation; techs constantly calculating new sets of hyperspace coordinates for the convoy and the CAP so that we can jump the hell out of here without crashing into each other on the far side; and a bunch of comm officers monitoring all the inter-fleet comm chatter, processing security codes from new arrivals, and answering all of the radio requests for supplies and maintenance."

"It's hell," he summed up with a sigh, looking squarely at Joker. "Feel like swapping shifts for a few days?"

[Aris V'larr]

"Order and serenity are good for the soul, Captain Luka."

Captain Aris "Angel" V'larr stepped around a refueling gurney clad in her sage green flightsuit with patches for Thunderbolt Squadron, pecking away at the datapad in her hand with a focus typically reserved for B'omarr monks contemplating the transcendent mysteries of the universe. But then, with her Sikarran brain and its parallel processing capabilities, it was more or less impossible to tell what was on her mind.

"In fact, I think the rest of Rogue Squadron could benefit from a few shifts of administrative duties," she continued. "It may allow them to experience dimensions of discipline denied them by their ordinary flight assignments."

Her pale yellow eyes flickered up from the datapad screen to meet Jaden's. Her face, as always, was implacably calm.

"I would be happy to help you draw up a duty rota."

[Jaden Luka]

"Much as I appreciate the offer, Captain V'Larr," Jaden countered, far calmer than he would have expected to be, "It would simply be irresponsible for too many of the Alliance's best pilots to be posted out of their cockpits at once."

He offered her a small smile. "We wouldn't to leave you Thunderbolts struggling to fill the void we'd leave on the flight roster."

He hesitated, running a thoughtful hand across his jaw. "Of course, if you feel that your own pilots aren't up to the same high standard that we -" He gestured to himself and Joker. "- have set, I'd be happy to discuss the possibility of extra duties and training with the Commodore during our next meeting."

[Aris V'larr]

Aris lifted one eyebrow. "Indeed, I am not certain I see the utility in additional training in the consumption of alcohol and exaggeration of personal exploits, but I am always willing to keep an open mind."

She glanced back to her datapad for a few more keystrokes. "Is that a sufficient quantity of playfully adversarial banter, or would you like to continue?"

[Jaden Luka]

"It's called bonding, Captain," Jaden countered, with a slight note of disbelief. "Socialising with your fellow pilots breeds trust; and if you know you can trust your wingman to keep you in once piece when you're compromised by alcohol, that goes a long way to helping you trust them in a firefight."

He shook his head. "Pilots are people, V'Larr: they aren't droids. They're better than droids. But if you're going to treat them like machines, box them in with uptight regulations, and care only about logic and utility, you're going to stunt their potential."

Jaden fell silent for a moment. "Of course, you need to have a personality to appreciate the merits of that sort of thing, so I guess that explains why it's such a difficult concept for you to grasp."

[Aris V'larr]

"Ah, we appear to have crossed from playfully adversarial to merely adversarial," Aris said. "Forgive me, it was not my intention to cause genuine offense. I only meant to draw attention to our squadrons' cultural differences in a humorous manner."

The Sikarran paused and then turned to Lieutenant Jakatta. "Pardon my ignorance, but I lack a personality. Is this when Rogues typically schedule their make-up sex?"

[Carré Inirial]

"Oh no...that comes after several rounds of drinks at the nearest bar."

High heeled boots clicked along the decking as Carré came around the corner, fingers smoothing out her sleek black flightsuit. A far cry from the baggy orange of an X-wing pilot, the fitted black fabric would have shouted 'Imperial!' were it not for the Alliance patches now on her shoulders.

She grinned as her steps carried her over to where they stood, tucking a loose curl behind an ear.

"Captains." Carré said simply and inclined her head, shooting Sin a discreet wink by way of greeting.

[Jamo Jakatta]

The air between Luka and V'larr should have sizzled with tension, but the Captain of Thunderbolt Squadron was as cool as a summers day on Hoth. Jamo thought she wouldn't be getting into a dust-up any time soon, unless it was a battle fought over a dejarik table. When she turned towards her eyes towards him with a bird-like tilt of her head, he smiled and opened his mouth to retort – only to be interrupted by the arrival of Carré Inirial. Jamo shrugged a shoulder towards her and slid a glance at Jaden, grinning.

“Looks like someone else followed you down from the bridge.”

[Jaden Luka]

"You sure you don't want to pull a few CIC shifts next week?" he countered, mirroring Joker's grin. "Carré is headlining in the comm pit on tuesday night."

He was sure that would probably have earned him a confused look from Phoenix; it was better than the alternative though, bearing in mind how damaging her bony little fists could be when she was in a bad mood.

He looked briefly at the crowd that had begun to gather, and at the slightly disgruntled deck crew who didn't seem all that pleased about people socialising while they were still on shift. Jaden dropped his voice a little, and leaned in closer to the cluster. "Maybe we should take this to the mess, before one of these techs stabs us for enjoying ourselves too much?"

He hesitated, glancing over towards Aris. "I presume you won't be joining us, Captain?"

[Aris V'larr]

Aris turned toward the newcomer to the group of pilots, and her eyes dipped momentarily to take in the unmistakeably Imperial weave of the woman's flightsuit. "As a matter of fact, I was hoping to have a word with Lieutenant Inirial," she said. "The mess would be preferable to here. If you don't mind?"

The Sikarran aimed a sideways glance back toward her fellow captain. "Besides, it will give us all a chance to practice our skills in socialization."

[Carré Inirial]

"I'd be delighted, Captain V'larr."

The pilot spoke with a smile and a polite nod, affording the woman the courtesy due to her rank. In truth, she'd wished for just such an opportunity herself. She'd not met the Captain while they had both served the Empire, but had once been on almost...intimate terms with her brother, Tannis.

That was a subject Carré wasn't sure she wanted to broach in earshot of the other Rogues. In spite of everything, she missed him.

Emerald eyes glanced at each of the others before settling on Jaden and discreetly biting her lip to stifle a grin at his expense. Aris certainly had a way with words.

[Jaden Luka]

The notion of Aris V'Larr encroaching on his social time didn't exactly thrill Jaden, but least there'd be alcohol; his default coping mechanism would hopefully see him through.

He even managed to muster a smile, though it wasn't quite as easy an expression as his grin normally was. "In that case, why don't you ladies head on over and score us a table?" The single-gender encompassing pronoun earned him a dark look from Oisin; but frankly, with the amount of fuss the guy kicked up over it, it was no wonder that the pilots kept 'accidentally' referring to him as a girl to wind him up.

"I'll get a round in as soon as I arrive; I just need to hijack Joker for a few seconds first."

[Jamo Jakatta]

Jamo watched the trio head off towards the mess. “Don't let V'larr spike my drink!” he called out after them, as an afterthought.

Once they were out of ear-shot, he turned to Jaden and arched an eyebrow.

[Jaden Luka]

Jaden drew in a deep breath, and blew it out slowly. Every time Aris V'Larr was around he felt so rediculously aggitated and tense that he either posessed some sort of deep-seated loathing towards her, or had some well-hidden latent attraction and 'feelings' crap.

He sure as hell hoped it was the latter.

"Long story short," he answered to Jamo's enquiring look, not wanting to wait any longer than necessary to get booze into his system. "I need a wingman for an, uh -"

He trailed off, resisting the urge to draw quotation marks in the air with his fingers. "- 'special assignment' that the Old Man has for me." He chose his words carefully. "It isn't flying, but it isn't admin either. It's something -"

Another silence fell as he struggled to sum things up without making it seem completely offputting. "It's unorthadox, just like everything else us Rogues have wound up doing."

He grimaced. "Sort of."

[Aris V'larr]

Mr. Ocasta was one of the Rogues with whom Aris was least acquainted. In terms of his record of duty and flight characteristics at least - it was difficult to say she was personally well acquainted with any of them. She knew he piloted the T-65BR reconnaissance variant of the X-Wing, colloquially called the "Snoopscoot" for the external sensor probes attached to its prow. That alone indicated a commitment to technical proficiency above personal glory; one did not typically attempt to woo bar-crawling nubiles with lurid tales of observing Imperial fleet maneuvers at half a billion klicks. She could entertain some hope at least that he had not yet been infected by the curious exchange of the head and hindquarters that seemed to afflict every male pilot among the Rogues.

Aris slipped her datapad into a front pocket in her flightsuit and fell into an easy stride alongside her two fellow pilots with her fingers laced neatly behind her back. They all knew the way to the mess, and there was no particular hurry to get there.

"This may interest you as well, Mr. Ocasta," she said. "For the past four weeks I have been working to fill in some of the gaps in our standard combat training cycles. Particularly, combat against advanced models of TIE starfighters. I understand, for instance, that not long ago Rogue Squadron had occasion to engage a TIE Defender (http://sw-fans.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20878) over Bandomeer."

[Oisin Ocasta]

Whatever Oisin had previously been thinking about - and admittedly, it probably wasn't anything of any real importance to anyone but himself - his mind completely stalled when his name came tumbling out of Captain V'Larr's mouth.

It wasn't anything personal; it was unfortunately the automatic defense mechanism that his brain developed when a woman spoke to him, in order to prevent him blurting out anything idiotic and embarassing. An unfortunate side effect was his complete inability to say pretty much anything at all; an old Corellian addage about cutting off your nose to spite your face sprung to mind.

"We did?"

His voice came out puzzled as he considered that fact, his slowly rebooting brain struggling to access the necessary memories. Bandomeer; that sounded vaguely familiar. TIE Defender; three winged things, right? The Captain was certainly right about them being advanced; and new, for that matter. Echo wasn't even sure that the Starfighter Corps had even bothered to think up an eyeball-related nickname for them yet.

"We did," he said again, slipping a little more assertion into his voice. "It was very, uh -" He fumbled for an adjective. "- advanced."

[Carré Inirial]

The pilot grinned at her wingman's reaction. It was always quite entertaining to watch 'Sin deal with people in general, but women in particular seemed to make the poor guy nearly fall apart. She nudged him as they walked and wondered if he'd been thinking of Chrys - that seemed to distract him more than usual.

Carré thought back to the mission over Bandomeer as silence fell for a few moments. It was still hard to remember details beyond the fact that they almost lost Tera. She sighed and lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose.

"We did. It had a hyperdrive equipped on it...my shots should have destroyed it. One hit the debris field behind it, and the other passed through where it would have been had it not made a jump..." she glanced over at Aris for a moment before staring ahead as they continued down the hall.

"...I'd bet anything that Tannis was in that cockpit. No one else I know of in the Imperial ranks could have pulled off those maneuvers." Carré said quietly.

[Aris V'larr]

That threw a spanner into Aris's momentum, and she had to quickly reallocate her mental processes to recover. It wasn't enough to keep her cheeks from flushing an olive hue.

"I... reviewed the telemetry from that mission," she replied. "Defenders are usually piloted by the Empire's elite, so it's difficult to make a conclusive..."

A brief glance into Carré's eyes confirmed what she already knew. When caught unprepared, Aris was a terrible liar. The Sikarran pilot took a moment to re-center herself.

"In any case," she said, a little more quietly, "our encounters with such enemies are rare, which means when they do appear they are far more likely to catch us unprepared. Our kill ratio is greater than one-to-one against the rank-and-file TIE fighters and interceptors, but against Defenders, Hunters, even Avengers, those ratios are reversed. And with pilots like... my brother... demonstrating the efficacy of these advanced models, it seems only logical to expect the Empire to field more of them in key engagements."

She turned again to Carré. "I believe your experience piloting a TIE Interceptor will be invaluable in the development of advanced training exercises. It may not be the Defender's equal in speed, but nothing in the Alliance fleet comes close."

[Jamo Jakatta]

The words 'special assignment' didn't fill Jamo with confidence, especially given how Jaden danced around them.

“Get to the short part of this long story already, Luka.”

[Carré Inirial]

There was something unspoken that now remained in the air between them, but it didn't need to be said aloud just yet. Tannis was a subject that was painful to both of them for vastly different reasons. Aris continued, however, and rather neatly offered a new topic of conversation.

"Whatever assistance you require, I would be more than happy to provide." Carré replied, a smile curling the corners of her lips. She had long thought that new training programs would be useful, and had even gone so far as to write down a number of her ideas.

"I've always thought that live exercises would benefit us more than simulations alone. I'm not sure if you're aware, but when I defected from the Empire, I brought my Interceptor with me. We can certainly design exercises with it in mind...I was thinking of something like an elaborate version of what we use to call laser tag on Carida."

[Aris V'larr]

"I was aware, actually," Aris replied. "I'm impressed that you've managed to keep it away from Intel this long. I understand it is not exactly standard Imperial issue."

The three pilots boarded a maglev that would take them aft from the Challenger's cavernous flight deck and into the portside bridge tower, which housed the CIC at the apex and Pilot Country at the base, a complex of quarters, briefing rooms, equipment bays, racks, lounges, and mess halls for the roughly six hundred pilots that might call a Venator-class Star Destroyer home at any one time. The Challenger's active complement was not nearly that large, and much of that space had been repurposed, but that hadn't stopped Rogue, Valkyrie, and Thunderbolt Squadrons from appropriating the Deck 52 mess as a sort of pilot's club.

Aris gripped a handrail as the maglev car began speeding down the tube to the next stop.

"In the Academy on Dac, we frequently flew training exercises against a squadron of captured TIEs using low-powered lasers to simulate weapons strikes," she said. "Your 'laser tag,' I believe. With a few modifications, we could retrofit your Interceptor into a passable facsimile of a TIE Defender. It's just one ship, but it's a start."

[Carré Inirial]

"To be truthful, Intel did spend time scanning every inch of it. They would have pulled it apart if I had let them, but being familiar with its maintenance, I got them into what they wanted to check without it becoming necessary." Carré replied, leaning back against one of the rails as it began speeding off. "You would be correct...its not standard issue. It is equipped with a hyperdrive and an advanced shielding system."

Fingers tightened on the handrail behind her as the maglev car decided to shudder to a halt instead of making a smooth and controlled stop. It sped off again after a moment, with only the three of them left inside.

"Yes! That's exactly what we did on Carida. I would be more than happy to make the modifications to make this work. Forgive me if I seem a bit overly enthusiastic, but I don't often have the opportunity to fly it, so I'm very much looking forward to this project." Emerald eyes were bright as Carré did her level best to keep her enthusiasm in check.

The maglev car stopped smoothly this time, a fact for which she thought 'Sin looked grateful. "I believe this is us? I still get turned around if I don't pay close attention..."