CAP in Hand

[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 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..."