Private Since We’re Neighbors And All…

[Bido Roz’lyn]

A trail of smoke billowed from the rear of Bido's little BZ-Ceptor as she began to shed more speed in the final stages of her atmospheric descent. The fuselage rocked back and forth slightly within the allowed slop between the lockdown pins she had installed to prevent it from spinning freely in the now faulty rotating collar.

She was so tired of fixing this damn thing…

As the clouds peeled away from her canopy, she beheld the expansive scrapyards of Mahporeem's primary industry. Ships from every era and vintage over the past one thousand years littered the scene in what appeared to Bido to be a form of "organized chaos". To a critical eye, one could see the patterns of how hulks of rotting ships had been dragged around for different stages of salvage or attempted restorations. In one particular "neighborhood" she could even see skeletal remains of her people's fabled Braha'tok Gunships. It reminded her that being neighbors, her people and the mahporieem had something of a shared history.

Over 900 years ago, her people had chosen this planet as the battleground to keep the Empire at an arm's length from Dornea. Using gorilla strikes, raids, and attempted rescues, the goal had been to force the Empire to focus on fortifying their position here, rather than subduing the rebel cell on Dornea. The plan worked, allowing the Dorneans to compensate for the disparity of strength between their navy and the Imperial fleet. They were able to keep the empire off Dornea long enough for the Mon Calamari to eventually bring in their massive cruisers and drive out the Empire once and for all with a single assault. While many tactical battles had been lost here, to the Dornean rebels, the Mahporeem campaign had been hailed as a massive strategic success. However, many Dorneans had been captured and enslaved by the Empire here in the battles that were lost. As a result, once the slaves had been freed, a notable percentage of the people on this planet had been noted as Dornean.

An icon appeared over a landing pad through her knock-off brand ear clickers indicating where she was supposed to land. Careful not to rock the fuselage too hard into her makeshift lockout pins, she guided the old pile of junk down to a relatively smooth landing. Upon touching down, she was quick to extinguish her engines and choke off her reactors to keep the smoke from building into a genuine fire. With some effort, she pried open her canopy latch, and then slouched down as low as she could in her seat, working her legs up onto the dash. Once her back was pressed against the bottom of her flight chair, she coiled up her legs and then kick them up as hard as she could against the glass of her canopy. It flew open so hard it almost bounced back closed upon hitting the limit of the hinges. Clambering awkwardly, she struggled her way out of the cockpit, stood on the nose of her fighter, and leapt to the ground below.

She then looked around the landing pad, wondering who had just seen her embarrassing egress…

Ronhar Tane

 

[Ronhar Tane]

CAPTAIN RONHAR TANE, TK-3301
CORROX CENTRAL
MAHPOREEM

"I have visual confirmation of our guest, over".

The MIN Night Reaver conducted a quick flyover of the landing site, looking for a suitable spot itself to land and disembark those currently traveling aboard the ship. Based on what he had seen en route, Ronhar wasn't entirely sure if his mission was going to be a diplomatic one or an impromptu search and rescue. After all, the ship that Bido Roz’lyn came in on seemed pretty janky even by Mahporeem standards, and Ronhar wasn't entirely convinced that they had actually managed to land the thing without crashing horribly in the process. Still, as the Night Reaver made its final descent toward the landing pad, Ronhar noticed that both the Dornean and her ship seemed intact enough.

The Night Reaver landed a few meters away from Bido Roz’lyn , and Ronhar jumped out of the passenger compartment, followed closely behind by a quartet of ARC Troopers.

"I take it you're Bido Roz’lyn ?", Ronhar shouted over the roar of the Night Reaver's engines as he approached the Dornean pilot. Though Mahporeem had a fairly sizable population of the alien species, he had never actually encountered one up close. She was rather curious looking, more canine than sea creature Ronhar thought, but he wisely decided to keep any and all observations to himself. In all honestly, he could care less what she looked like, as long as she could fly the starfighter. Her previous display didn't fill him with a huge amount of confidence, however.

"The testing site is over that way", Ronhar stated as he jerked his thumb in some general direction. "We'll give you a ride on the Night Reaver, why don't you hop on?, Ronhar said as he began walking back toward his ship, not even bothering to see if she was following him. Once everyone was aboard, the Night Reaver thundered off toward the testing site, where a very special and very experimental craft was waiting for Bido Roz’lyn .

After a few minutes in the air, they came to the testing site, hovering directly over the starfighter that Bido would be piloting today: the DS-47 TIE Fighter. It was a state of the art, one of a kind starfighter developed jointly by Mahporeem, Dornea and the N&Z Umbrella Corporation. It incorporated a number of unusual technologies not seen on other starfighters, and the Imperial Remnant hoped that these tests would prove successful enough to start producing the technology found on this starfighter onto other starfighters made by Mahporeem.

That, of course, would all depend on just how well the test pilot did here today.

Overhead, dozens of TIE Vultures buzzed about, the so called "target practice" for the DS-47. The idea was simple: Bido Roz’lyn would have to engage a numerically superior force and destroy all the targets as quickly as she possibly could. Luckily for her, the TIE Vultures had ion cannons replacing their laser cannons, so there wasn't any risk of them destroying the prototype TIE Fighter...as long as Bido avoided crashing into the ground or a mid air collision!

"The Night Reaver and I will remain airborne so that we can have a better perspective on your upcoming performance", Ronhar informed Bido as the Night Reaver landed next to the DS-47. "We look forward to seeing your skills in action", Ronhar said unconvincingly as he couldn't help but keep Bido's near crash landing stuck in the back of his mind.

"Any questions?"

TAGS:
Bido Roz’lyn

 

[Bido Roz’lyn]

Bido stepped off of the Night Reaver and beheld the Starfighter before her. Her heart pounded hard at the thought of finally flying something other than her old run-down BZ-ceptor.

It was small. It couldn’t be much bigger than an a-wing, which was commonplace for TIE style craft. But on a glance, it appeared to be loaded with more technology than a typical production military Starfighter. Heavy guns, sturdy hull, shield emitters, she especially recognized the missiles… to her experienced pilot’s eye, she knew what she was looking at; a fighter that could dish out serious punishment while taking it in return. If she had to guess, it was probably not a practical racing machine; such heavy hardware crammed into the hull of such a small fighter usually meant the engines would have their work cut out for them. However, the smaller profile would also make it harder to hit, which manufactures often overlooked when building oversized whale-boats. Overall, she felt like she was looking at a solid work of balance and consideration.

She was eager to fly it!

"The Night Reaver and I will remain airborne so that we can have a better perspective on your upcoming performance", Ronhar informed Bido as the Night Reaver landed next to the DS-47. "We look forward to seeing your skills in action", Ronhar said unconvincingly as he couldn't help but keep Bido's near crash landing stuck in the back of his mind.

"Any questions?"

Bido’s quills flickered annoyance briefly at Ronhar Tane ’s tone, and she glowered at him slightly, but her tone had a playful, competitive edge to it, “I’ve been flying for longer than you’ve been alive, kiddo. Your parents too, for that matter. No one else could have landed my ugly the way I did. And as for your little drones up there,” she pointed a purple finger up at the TIE Vultures circling overhead, “I’ve done more with less.”

With that, she strode with confidence, but not cockiness, up to the DS-47 and clambered inside with a relatively intuitive sense of how to get in. Clearly, she knew her way around a starfighter.

Within seconds of looking around, she managed to mostly sort out what-was-what. She immediately retrieved the provided "Ear Clickers" from inside the cubby under the seat. She then noticed the external hull pressure gauge on the dash and she had to stop and look more closely. Is that for WATER pressure?

Another scan of the controls with her eyes and she quickly found ballast controls and “water modes” for the plasma canons. Sonovabich, he actually built this thing to submerge!

She quickly fastened her crash webbing, and slid her helmet on over her ear clickers. With a couple quick flicks of the right switches, the reactor purred to life, and the engines coughed into action. She watched the gauges bounce around for just a moment before they all easily settled down into nominal readings.

this thing starts up pretty quickly. Very nice

Once she was comfortable with the readings on her gauges, she waited until the Night Reaver was airborne. Once they were clear, she squeezed the throttle and lifted off the pad with a grace that could only be matched by a pilot with nearly a hundred years of practice. She then decided to test the power of her engines. Her stick pulled back hard, and the DS-47 stood up straight on its tail. She goosed the landing repulsors to help stop the forward momentum so that the fighter was hovering perfectly still on the power of its ion engines alone. Once her airspeed hit zero, Bido punched the throttle as hard as it would go and the little fighter began to climb straight up into the sky.

acceleration isn’t too terrible in this gravity. Not bad…

As planned, she was now climbing headfirst into the cluster of circling TIE Vultures, approaching from their shadows.

She decided she needed a challenge today.

Switching to her "Bug-Spray" Cluster Missiles, she quickly “clicked” a series of commands into her ear clicker set, which were quickly relayed to the XM-15 missile brain inside the missile. She then fired off a single missile into the swarm.

The missile wasted no time once it left its tube, rupturing its fairings almost immediately and unleashing 8 smaller missiles at the little droid fighters. The smaller missiles then followed their given instructions, each targeting a separate TIE vulture, and provoking it into defending itself. Each small missile also generated several spoof phantoms of themselves, each of the phantoms “targeting” a separate TIE vulture.

With this move, Bido would piss off the whole damn flock at once.

And just maybe… they might actually provide her with a real challenge…

 

[Ronhar Tane]

CAPTAIN RONHAR TANE, TK-3301
CORROX CENTRAL
MAHPOREEM

"I've been flying for longer than you've been alive, kiddo. Your parents too, for that matter. No one else could have landed my ugly the way I did. And as for your little drones up there, I've done more with less."

Ronhar raised an eyebrow behind the lens of his helmet. This Bido Roz’lyn was certainly rather..rough around the edges, even by Mahporeem's relatively lax standards. Hopefully, that would translate into spectacular flying, but that still remained to be seen, and based off of what Ronhar had witnessed already, he wasn't feeling particularly confident about her odds of even getting off the ground successfully.

"I see", Ronhar responded evenly. "Best of luck, then."

With that, the Night Reaver blasted off into the atmosphere as Bido made her way toward the DS-47 that had been parked nearby. Despite the exoticness of the starship, she seemingly had no trouble figuring out how to pilot the ship and was soon airborne herself, making her way toward the swarm of TIE Vultures that were circling overhead. As she approached the droid fighters, a single missile emerged from her ship, and from that missile sprung eight more. "Bug-Spray" Cluster Missiles were what they were called, a piece of previously unknown Dornean tech that the ship's designers had incorporated. They seemed well worth the time and effort it took to rig them to the ship, as the eight smaller missiles found eight TIE Vultures to destroy, blasting them all into thousands of tiny little pieces.

The rest of the TIE Vultures immediately moved to counter, trying to take down Bido through a combination of sheer numbers and evasive actions. Still, as impressive as the droid fighters were, they were only that, droid fighters, and could never hope to replicate the skill and experience of an organic pilot. They soon started losing to Bido, quite badly, and at the rate at which they were being destroyed, the exercise would be over in a matter of mere minutes.

Ronhar watched on with fascination. This Bido cleaned up rather nicely, and her boast about "flying for longer than he and his parents had been alive" seemingly had some truth to it. Perhaps there was more to this Bido than met the eye, and Ronhar was eager to see just how experienced she was as a fighter pilot.

It was time for phase two of the exercise.

"This is Captain Tane to ground", Rohar stated over his commlink as he begun to implement the next phase of test. "Activate all automated ion turrets. Ensure targeting parameters are set to avoid harming the TIE Vultures", Ronhar requested as his eyes left the sky and drifted back to the ground. What had previously appeared to be towers or scrap or piles of garbage suddenly sprang to life as previously hidden ion turrets began firing at Bido's DS-47, trying to take the ship down as if it was an uninvited guest or intruder infiltrating Mahporeem's skies. Ronhar than began to directly address the Night Reaver itself, or to be more accurate, its onboard A.I system.

"Altas?", Ronhar queried to his own ship.

<"Hello, Captain">, Atlas responded politely. <"How can I be of service to you?">.

"I want you to begin jamming the sensors on that DS-47. You are to ignore any requests or attempts to begin communication, but you are forbidden to engage the craft with any offensive weapon systems unless you receive my clear and express permission. Is that understood, Atlas?", Ronhar asked his ship.

<"Of course, Captain Tane. I shall begin jamming efforts immediately">, the ship replied as it begun to attack Bido's ship electronically. Between this sudden electronic assault and the appearance of the ion turrets, Bido would have their work cut out for them. Then again, Ronhar wanted to see just how well they operated under pressure, and if they couldn't handle something as relatively benign as this, then they had no place serving as a test pilot for the Imperial Remnant...

TAGS:
Bido Roz’lyn

 

[Bido Roz’lyn]

Well, I guess this isn't too bad…​

Her experience over the course of the last few minutes had been something of a frustrating disappointment. In all honesty, Bido was beginning to wonder if a pilot of her caliber was even needed to properly test a bird like this. The DS-47 was, so far, a phenomenal piece of hardware. So much so that – to Bido's dismay – it did all the work for her.

At first, she had thought that her expert piloting was to credit for the TIE vultures not even being able to score so much as a glancing hit on her ship. She had been mildly underwhelmed, but satisfied that she hadn't "lost it" over the past couple years of working in procurement. Then, when she had slipped-up in a head-to-head gunfight with a lucky droid fighter, she had expected to take a small pummeling on her heavy forward shields. To her astonishment, the lucky droid fighter had proceeded to viciously "slaughter" the empty air beside her with a brilliant conviction of eager ION bolts.

At first, she had seriously considered taking an angry pot-shot at Ronhar Tane and his little Night Reaver for programming the droids to not shoot directly at her. However, she refrained from such an act, resigning to test her theory before enacting any kind of protest. This time, when she intentionally allowed herself to fall carefully into another droid fighter's weapons envelope, this time she noticed a specific icon in her ear clickers. The icon indicated the automated activation of the DS-47's NZ Thanatos ECM/A Suite. Then, the pieces all clicked into place in her head. Her ship's sophisticated countermeasures were simply too powerful for the little droid fighters to overcome.

Whelp, I guess that's what these tests are for…​

With the NZ Thanatos ECM/A Suite and other countermeasures making her virtually untouchable, she resigned to just test the weapons accuracy for the time being. Again, she knew that she could use her 3 remaining Bug Spray missiles to mop up these fighters with relative ease, but she had only chosen to use the first one for antagonizing the whole lot at once. She just needed… more from this. Switching to the plasma canons, she tried to challenge herself by committing to surgical kills only. Specifically, she would only take kills by exclusively destroying the starboard wing pylons. What fighters she took out would be unceremoniously separated from their starboard wings with a comical pop, like a satisfying pimple.

She resigned herself to accept that this was as good as it gets and that this was how she'd mop up the whole lot of them. That, however, was when she was interrupted and caught off-guard.

A powerful ION canon bolt shrieked up from somewhere on the ground and struck her fighter squarely on the port-side solar panel! Immediately, she felt like a moron, realizing that the only reason the ION bolt was able to hit her directly was because (she hated to admit this) she had forgotten to activate her shields upon initial take-off. Her long, long career as a fighter pilot sometimes had the drawback of complacency, a trait that sometimes gave people the ironic impression that she was a rookie.

Her gauges and scopes all shimmered and flickered from the sudden introduction of dense IONs to their circuits before things settled out and diagnostics showed a handful of systems were damaged. Relatively pleased that her ship was still in reasonably fightable condition, she sheepishly spooled up her NZ SSP-SIXTUS/B suite. She then focused on her clicker set to regain her situational awareness.

A tidal wave of ION canon bolts suddenly surged up from the planet surface, and her heart leapt with excitement! Finally! A crossfire! An actual challenge! She began to issue instructions into her clicker set to give her a layout of all the ION canon turret sites. Just then, before the clicker set could begin illustrating the locations of all the turrets, a loud crackling exploded in her ears!

Jamming!

KRIFF YEAH!​

Oh, now this is what she was talking about! A few more hits were harmlessly absorbed into her heavy shields before her clicker set was able to filter out the interference and stop abusing her ears. She wasn't able get sensor feed from her instruments anymore, but that wasn't so bad. She had lots of experience flying blind. And now she was in a position to make actual tactical decisions!

Her mind began to "chew" on options. In truth, she still had 3 more bug spray missiles. She could fire one off in recon mode into the sky, well out of jamming range. From there, it could disgorge the smaller recon missiles, which could about-face, and feed her a comprehensive view of the battlefield through laser comms.

But that was no fun.

Instead, she decided to show Ronhar Tane what a veteran Dornean fighter pilot was capable of. She began jinking and juking, working to make herself a harder target for the ground turrets and the TIE vultures. The jamming was giving her NZ Thanatos ECM/A Suite grief now, which forced Bido to dodge the shots coming from the droid fighters for real now. She also had to contend with a crossfire too, which was starting to test her evasive maneuvers in earnest.

Let's even the playing field for a moment.​

Even with the limited visibility that her octagonal canopy offered, she was able to find the massive cloud that she had flown through on her way in when flying her BZ-ceptor. It was absolutely massive and billowing, rolling in with the promise of high winds and heavy rain. Steering towards it, she attempted to activate her SLAB to get to it a bit quicker. ALERTS suddenly sprang up on her ear clicker set and her engines sputtered with a massive belch of smoke. Clearly, the ION blast from earlier had disabled her SLAB… no matter…

She quickly shut it off before it could kill her momentum and proceeded with nominal speed, carefully bobbing and weaving to prevent ION blasts from overwhelming her shields. Within reasonable time, she managed to plunge her tiny ship into the opaque darkness of the stormcloud. The moment she did so, she activated her own jamming suite to obscure her position from the enemy fighters and gun emplacements.

Zigzagging through the cloud, she did her best to keep the enemy from guessing her position. In here, her pursuers would likely be as sensor blind as she was as long as they were both using jammers.

However, in the murky gloom she'd take her Dornean eyes against the droids’ photoreceptors any day…

Your move, Ronhar Tane ​

 

[Ronhar Tane]

CAPTAIN RONHAR TANE, TK-3301
CORROX CENTRAL
MAHPOREEM

It seemed that the additional obstacles that Ronhar had selected for the test were having the desired effect of making things much more difficult than they had been initially. Between Bido Roz’lyn 's skill as a pilot and the superior performance of the DS-47 that she was flying, the TIE Vultures that Ronhar had selected for the test were all being destroyed at an alarmingly quick rate. It was only thanks to the unexpected activation of the concealed ion turrets and the jamming that the Night Reaver inflicting on Bido that the test hadn't already ended prematurely. Ronhar wanted to analyze ever aspect of the Dornean's flying, and the only way he was going to be able to do that was if he provided her with a real challenge.

He had to admit that she had made some rather unexpected moves when confronted with the arrival of additional hostiles. Rather than attempt to destroy the ion turrets or the source of the jamming, Bido had simply flown out of range and into a rather large cloud formation, one that was starting to howl and thunder as the winds inside of it began to pick up. Considering how unexpected that must have been for Bido, Ronhar couldn't blame her for taking the most expedient action to get herself to some modicum of safety. Unfortunately, while she could outrange the ion turrets, the same could not be said for the Night Reaver's jamming attempts. Ronhar radio'd the pilot of the craft with further instructions on how to proceed.

"Pilot, take us the very edge of that cloud formation. ATLAS, continue your jamming attempts against the DS-47. We'll see if our test pilot has the presence of mind or not to counteract our jamming attempts.

Both the pilot and ATLAS replied in the affirmative as the Night Reaver edged toward the cloud formation. The skies were beginning to darken around Ronhar's ship as the swirling vortex of wind before him started growing ever more violent. Ronhar wisely decided to stay outside of the clouds, unwilling to risk the safety of himself, his men and his ship to get a better position to view the ongoing test. The flight recorder inside the DS-47 would surely provide Ronhar with plenty of data, along with Bido's personal testimony, assuming they survived long enough to give it!

Inside the clouds, dozens of TIE Vultures continued swarming about, seemingly unconcerned for their own survival or well being. They ducked and dived around Bido as each vessel attempted to outmaneuver her ship in rather spectacular fashion, as the droid fighters didn't have to worry about the gravitational force that would normally stress or potentially even incapacitate an organic pilot. Still, each TIE Vulture was most certainly at a massive disadvantage against Bido's ship, and the only reason they had done as well as they did was due to their superior numbers, numbers which continued to steadily dwindle with each passing minute...

TAGS:
Bido Roz’lyn

 

[Bido Roz’lyn]

Writing from the perspective of Jord Du'mas

Jord Du'mas had been living inside the carcass of a Braha'tok gunship long enough that the ship had stopped feeling like a tomb and started feeling like a bad habit. Half the forward bay was hydroponics now—rows of algae racks and leafy greens under grow-lamps, humidity clinging to the bulkheads like guilt. The rest was sensors. Old Dornean eyes, ancient receiver horns, and an OSIVP overlay he'd written, rewritten, and hated every time it worked. Semi-retired, they called it. Jord called it minimal exposure to people.

He was two hundred and five, born Mahporeem-side alongside a minority of Dorneans that called this planet home. His family name carried a dull little shine in certain circles—ancestors who'd helped the liberation efforts back when fighting the Empire here was a way of keeping Dornea's shores from catching fire. It never made Jord proud. It just made him tired. He'd inherited the reputation the way you inherit an old wrench: useful, heavy, and always in the wrong drawer.

So he watched. That's what he did. Weapons tests, flight trials, the little theater that men with uniforms insisted was "necessary." He'd been watching this one too—Captain Tane's Night Reaver hanging just outside the storm like a cautious predator, while its jamming reached in and clawed at a pilot's senses. Jord didn't need a front-row seat to know the point of the exercise. He just needed the data.

The DS-47 punched into the cloud with the pack of TIE Vultures hot on its heels, vanishing into the opaque churn. The storm wasn't just a weather system. It was a wall—black layered vapor, lightning strobing deep inside it like something alive shifting in its sleep, wind shearing through the interior until the cloud mass rolled and buckled in slow violent waves. Jord's sensors hated it. His sensors hated everything. But this time they had an excuse.

What surprised him was how cleanly she disappeared. Not degraded. Not smeared. Just… gone. For a breath, the DS-47 became a hole in the data, like someone had reached into the feed and pinched the signal off between finger and thumb. Jord's quills twitched, an old reflex. That's not weather.

Then the Night Reaver edged closer to the storm's lip—careful, controlled, staying outside the worst of it while trying to get a better look. Jord tracked the movement on his own scope and felt a sense of controlled competence from the stalking ship. Tane wasn't reckless. He was thorough. Thorough men were hard to embarrass.

And then—right when the Night Reaver would be in position to get a clearer scan—Bido's DS-47 reappeared on Jord's display like it… wanted to be seen. Not fuzzy. Not half-ghosted through interference. Crisp enough that even the Braha'tok's antique receiver horns could paint it. Jord stared at the return for a second longer than he meant to. That's intentional, he decided. Not because he liked mystery. Because he disliked coincidence.

A second DS-47 return blinked in. Then a third. Then another. Nine in total, scattered around the cloud where there should have been one—each with a signature that matched just well enough to be insulting. Jord's software began auto-labeling them, and he felt the urge to reach through the console and strangle his own code. Plasma discharges lit up on the readout—multiple bursts, multiple vectors—yet no Vulture returns winked out. False positives. Spoofed weapons fire. TECMIS could do that. Jord hadn't seen anyone use it like this in years. The desired effect would be to force the Vultures to spit their attention.

The nine returns then suddenly began to converge—drifting, then moving with purpose—angling toward the Night Reaver's hover position near the cloud edge. Jord's mouth tightened. It wasn't an attack pattern. Not yet. It was a message. I knew you'd be here…

Optics confirmed it a heartbeat later. The real DS-47 burst from the cloud into clean air, and behind it came eight "bug-spray" cluster missiles—tight, obedient, riding her wake like a school of sharp fish. Jord watched their formation and the sensor spoofing clicked into place with ugly elegance. She hadn't multiplied her fighter. She'd fired the missiles into the cloud when nobody could see her, then used their ECM asset-spoofing to masquerade them as her. Eight ghosts. One pilot. A neat little trick to draw her pursuers into a tight corridor, and show that she was in control.

Bido screamed past the Night Reaver close enough to make even Jord's aging receiver horns complain, then dumped her nose and dove hard—straight down into the killbox, with the Vultures likely still chasing and ground-based ion turrets throwing blue-white bolts up through the air. The missiles she'd used as decoys snapped together near the Reaver as they passed—slamming into one another in a tight cluster-collision that wasn't close enough to force damage, but was certainly close enough to make a point. The Vultures would likely keep pursuit in whatever number their programming allowed, streaming after her into the dive.

Jord's brows twitched again as she aimed for the densest knot of ion emplacements instead of away from them. She was letting the DS-47's small profile do the work—jinking just enough that the shots grazed shield edges instead of landing square, forcing glancing hits and wasted cycles. For a moment he couldn't figure out why the pursuant Vultures' accuracy would look a bit… off. Then he saw it: her flight path would keep them pinned in the same jamming corridor Tane had focused on her—DS-47 in front, any pursuant Vultures hopefully directly behind, all of them trapped in the electronic fog cast from the Night Reaver. Photoreceptors only. No clean targeting. Jord felt a reluctant flicker of approval. Using your enemy's jamming as a leash was the kind of thinking you couldn't teach with manuals.

Then she began hammering the ground around the ion turrets with chin-mounted L-S9.3 laser fire—fast cycle, light recoil, rapid staccato. Not the heavy plasma cannons. Intentional. The impacts kicked up dust in thick curtains in the ground that was yet untouched by the coming rain storm. The cloud of dust grew, chewing visibility down to nothing until the emplacements sat inside their own private storm. Jord's concern rose, cold and practical. She wasn't decelerating enough. She wasn't turning enough. She was either about to die—

—or about to do something stupid on purpose.

Her engines sputtered. Quit. Then began puking smoke in obscene, choking volume, the same ugly symptom he'd seen just before she entered the storm earlier. Only now the smoke poured directly into the Vultures' projected approach path, ideally turning their last clean meters into blindness. The DS-47's nose snapped up at the last instant and its belly slapped into the dust cloud like it was diving into water, vanishing completely. The cloud billowed outward—sharply, violently—as if something heavy had just been added inside it. Then she shot back out the top, tumbling lazily, almost casual. Repulsorlifts. A ground-bounce. A giant spring loaded at the last second. Jord exhaled once, short. Of course.

Behind her, any pursuing Vultures would likely get no such grace period. They would be fast, committed, and now flying by eye through dust and engine-smoke toward terrain that would abruptly stop being theoretical. Jord wouldn't get to decide what they hit. He didn't need to. The geometry would do that for him—ion emplacements, ground, scrap, anything unlucky enough to be where their noses would likely arrive first.

The DS-47 righted itself cleanly and re-lit its engines, charging back toward the Night Reaver with its teeth bared. Jord caught Bido's voice over an open channel, crackling through interference: "Common, Tane! Tell me you have a boss battle for me…"

 

[Ronhar Tane]

CAPTAIN RONHAR TANE, TK-3301
CORROX CENTRAL
MAHPOREEM

"Anything on sensors?", Ronhar yelled over the squall of the storm as the Night Reaver desperately searched for any lifesigns from Bido Roz’lyn . Ronhar couldn't decide if she was particularly brave or particularly stupid. What the hell was she thinking? Forget the fact that she was flying one the of most experimental and expensive starfighters that the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant had ever produced: was she trying to get herself killed in her attempt to throw the TIE Vultures off her tail? The droid fighters were very much expendable, Bido's DS-47, on the other hand, was most certainly NOT. How in the name of the galaxy was he going to explain this to the N&Z Umbrella Corporation? Ronhar groaned internally at the thought of doing so. This was what he deserved for being so trusting of a clearly half insane Dornean!

Ronhar was just about to tell the Night Reaver to abandon its mission when its sensor suite suddenly screamed to life, having seemingly picked up the DS-47 in the swirling vortex of wind and rain. At least for now, Ronhar's investment was still intact! The sensor array officer scrambled to make sense of the incoming readings.

"We've got contact!", he declared optimistically as he began to calculate the approach vectors of the incoming DS-47. "It looks like the ship is headed on a straight course towards-"

He suddenly stopped, confusion rather apparent all across his face.

"Wait a minute, sir, I'm detecting additional readings converging on our location. That can't be right! The Night Reaver is detecting an additional eight readings for the DS-47. The weather must be interfering with our instruments, sir."

Normally, Ronhar would agree with was what a perfectly reasonable assessment of the situation. Yet this situation was anything but normal, because Ronhar knew what armaments the DS-47 had been loaded with. And if his guess was right, than that idiotic Dornean was about to buzz Ronhar and his ship. He immediately radio'd the pilot of the Night Reaver.

"Pull back", he demanded of him.

"Come again, sir?", the pilot asked, seemingly only half paying attention to Ronhar as he continued to allow himself to be distracted by the storm.

"PULL BACK!", Ronhar shouted at full volume as the pilot complied, jerking the Night Reaver away from the storm...

...and barely out of the way of Bido's DS-47 and the eight "Bug-Spray" Missiles that were now following her ship, seemingly locked onto her spacecraft as if they had been fired by a hostile starfighter. That was impossible, Ronhar knew, because none of the TIE Vultures came equipped with missiles, meaning that Bido had fired all her remaining missiles within the maelstrom, gotten them to follow her starfighter without exploding prematurely, and had somehow managed to find her way out of the storm intact. The remaining TIE Vultures were following closely behind, though they remained fixated on the missiles, and not Bido's ship. It was as insane a maneuver as it was brilliant. Even more impressively, the Dornean's flight path was taking her, and by extension the TIE Vultures, directing into the jamming range of the Night Reaver. Ronhar's ship was now actively working against the Vultures, giving Bido all the time she needed to destroy the ground based defenses.

Yet there was one glaring problem with Bido's strategy: her flight vector was taking her and her ship directly toward the ground, and she seemingly made no attempts to correct her flight path. It took Ronhar mere moment's to realize what she was going to do, and he could feel the horror of her impending "maneuver". No, she hadn't made a mistake, she was deliberately aiming for the ground. Ronhar could only watch in dismay as her ship slammed into the dirt before bouncing skyward, the impact leaving a reasonably sized crater where her ship had hit. The TIE Vultures weren't nearly as lucky: they exploded into a thousand pieces upon slamming into the ground. Ronhar couldn't tell what, if anything was broken on Bido's ship, but he bet it was expensive.

To add insult to injury, Bido had the gall to radio him with an utterly absurd message over comms:

"Common, Tane! Tell me you have a boss battle for me…"

"You'll have to forgive me if I decline, Captain Roz'lyn, but I personally would prefer it if you didn't crash my ship trying to outfly anything else I could throw at you. That will be quite enough, this test is concluded. You may take your ship-"

His voice trailed off as the Night Reaver's sensors began picking up new readings, though these were ground based instead of aerial. Scurrying around the testing site were dozens of people, picking their way through the various wreckages that now littered the area. Ronhar recognized them for who they were almost instantly: the Mahporeem Militia. They were an illegal defense force consisting of ordinary civilians, determined to take up arms against any would be invaders of the planet. The Imperial Remnant barely tolerated their existence, since in the event of an actual planetary invasion, they would prove to be a useful asset. Most of the time, however, their existence caused headaches for Ronhar, and he had no lost love for the members of the militia.

That gave him an idea. He radio'd Bido with an intentionally vague set of directions, curious to see how she would respond.

"Belay that order, Captain. It seems we have a number of uninvited guests. I'm sure you can see them running around down below. I want you to get rid of all them. By any means necessary."

TAGS:
Bido Roz’lyn

 

[Bido Roz’lyn]

"You'll have to forgive me if I decline, Captain Roz'lyn, but I personally would prefer it if you didn't crash my ship trying to outfly anything else I could throw at you. That will be quite enough, this test is concluded. You may take your ship-"

Bido yipped a Dornean chuckle of casual amusement, "what, you don't think your ship can handle my flying?" She teased, then reassuringly, "Trust me, I know what a fighter like this can take." Just then, her flight path brought her fighter right up through Night Reaver's jet-wash. The sudden contact with turbulent pressure didn't knock her off course, but the frame shook in such a way that told her something was a little loose. She hadn't impacted the ground when she did her little repulsorlift maneuver, but the stress of compressing her drives against the ground at such a high velocity might've taken its toll. She made a note to get that checked out later…

Just then, the channel went dead quiet. Old instincts kicked in and she knew deep down that there must be a development of some kind. She tried checking her scopes, but nothing showed up, as the jamming was still in effect. She leveled her fighter out to match velocity with the Night Reaver while she waited for things to unfold.

After a minute, Ronhar's voice came through the comm again.

"Belay that order, Captain. It seems we have a number of uninvited guests. I'm sure you can see them running around down below. I want you to get rid of all them. By any means necessary."

She killed her throttle to almost nothing and then dropped her nose towards the ground. From here, her sensors were still incapacitated by the Night Reaver, but her Dornean eyes were still quite keen. She could see the beings scurrying around to steal as much from the wreckages as they could get their hands on. Something didn't feel right about this. The scavengers didn't exactly move like criminals. With criminals, there was usually a combination of thrill and professionalism in the way they conducted their movements. This seemed more… routine and frantic. Like it was some kind of survival tactic combined with some kind of tradition. Ronhar Tane hadn't said anything about who they were. Nor did he explain what he meant by "get rid of".

She knew a test when she saw one. Exactly what he was testing was unclear, but that was probably the point. He wanted to see how she'd take it and where her mind would lean.

If Ronhar Tane wants to know who I am, then I will show him. Take it or leave it.

She then responded, "I'll make it happen, Commander."

She coaxed her throttle to a mild cruise and eventually brought her fighter directly over the scavenger's operation. Once overhead and drawing all of their gazes to the sky, she engaged the repulsors and brought her ship to a full stop. Then, with a deliberately conspicuous motion, she lowered her fighter down onto the landing gear on the ground amongst them. Within moments of touching the ground, she locked out her systems, but kept the engines running at a low idle in case she needed to get out quickly. Once satisfied with that, and other security measures in place, she stood up and opened her top hatch.

With the top hatch opened, she poked her head out and surveyed the area around her ship. All around her, the crews had all stopped working, but hadn't put down their tools yet. They were all staring at her, wearing grimy overalls or lab smocks. Some were wearing chunks of what looked like repurposed droid armour, but only as a sort of style rather than combat protection. A handful actually had holstered slugthrowers, but most of the individuals seemed to prefer tools. This group might've been some kind of combat unit, but if they were, they hadn't been keen on fighting today. Only salvage.

One prominent member, a Dornean male in a dirty lab coat, a dull expression, and a cig hanging from his mouth, stepped forward and walked up to her ship. When he was close enough to be heard, he stopped, indulged in a drag of his cig, and then spoke first, "What seems to be the problem, officer?"

Bido spoke loudly and clearly, "I'm Lieutenant Bido Roz'lyn of the Mahporeem Imperial Remnant. I'm under specific orders to 'get rid of you'. I'm assuming that the militia is aware that they're not supposed to be here?" Her assumption was something of an educated guess. She knew that the militia was illegal, and that was the only likely culprit that Ronhar Tane would be concerned about. She was also not totally commissioned with the Mahporeem imperial navy yet, having not yet signed the contract. But that was scheduled to happen after this test, so it wasn't a complete bluff.

The half-lidded Dornean flicked the bud on his cig, "It's a salvage world, Lieutenant." He replied matter-of-factly, as though that sentence would explain the whole ordeal, "And I seriously doubt that you're a Mahporeem native. Your accent is distinctly Dornean. So I'll explain it in simple terms for you: salvage is a way of life for us. The Imperial Remnant can't take that part of our culture from us, and they know it. If you knew anything about our way of life, you'd know that you're being tooled with. Your orders are a joke and you're being set up to fail. We won't give up our salvage rights and you'll have a disaster on your hands if you try to make us. I'm not threatening you. I'm just spelling out how things work around here."

Bido barely held back a sigh. Of course. A salvage world like this would have complex and highly nuanced property laws. Chances were, these guys were probably in the wrong, but they probably had enough experience with legal loopholes to get by and skirt the rules. Loopholes that she had no idea how to navigate herself.

Perhaps it was best to leave no room for argument.

"My orders are to get rid of you. If you want salvage rights, you'll have to take it up with my superiors. Otherwise, I will have to ask you to leave or I'll be forced to remove you physically."

"Well you can tell your superiors to eat my ass! We were here first!" This was followed by a laughter from his cohorts.

Bido allowed herself to sigh this time. She would start shooting if she had to, but she'd killed enough people in her lifetime. If there was a way to prevent unnecessary bloodshed, she'd rather take it. She took a moment to think about this before a thought occurred to her.

"Alright, look. What's your name?"

The older Dornean male regarded her for a moment before deciding to answer, "Jord." He sounded reluctant to answer, but seemed sense her changing tact. Perhaps his curiosity got the best of him…

"Jord, would it be safe to assume that you and your crew have benefactors? Backers? Expectant clients? People who are expecting you to deliver today?"

"It's possible," he hedged. His head cocked in interest, as he seemed to sense a deal coming.

Bido pointed to in the general direction of where she had initially landed her ship, "A few klicks that way, I have a ship. It's a BZ Ceptor. It's fully functional and registered to my name. I promise you, it's worth a lot more than the scraps that you'll find here."

Jord's eyebrow quills went asymmetrical, "you mean the ugly that you came down here in a giant cloud of smoke?"

"It's just a hydraulic leak." Bido said quickly, "the hoses for the rotation collar cracked and sprung a leak all over the old Novaldex. Everything else still runs just fine, but I have the rotating collar locked-out. I was literally coming here to do this test flight and buy new hoses when I was done."

"And, what? You're gonna trade your ship for our salvage?" his tone was suspicious.

Bido patted the top of her DS-47, "turns out I'm getting a new ship anyways. You take the ugly. Leave the salvage, and I won't have to strafe your people violently."

Jord snorted, "ah, there's the threat!"

"Well?"

Jord thought for a moment. He didn't look around at the salvage at all. Just Bido. As if he was more interested in her than the actual situation. Finally he flicked his cig to the ground stamping it out and said, "alright. You got a deal. My boys will pack it in here, and leave the area. I'll be around to pick up the fighter later."

Bido pulled out a datapad and sent him the location of her ship. With that, they both dismissed themselves, and Bido flew her ship back up into the air to rendezvous with Ronhar Tane .

---

JORD DU'MAS

Once Bido was clear and away from the field, Jord pulled out a tiny device from his pocket. With a simple press of the only button on the device, the holographic images of the so-called workers shimmered, and then disappeared. Where there had been dozens of militia scavengers was now nothing but junk. Then, out of his other pocket, he pulled out his Commlink, which was already keyed to Ronhar Tane 's frequency, "well, commander. I don't know what you were expecting, but she's definitely not the bloodthirsty type. I'll send you my recordings from this interaction, and the dogfight, of course so you can analyze them. What did you think of her, anyways?"

 

[Ronhar Tane]

CAPTAIN RONHAR TANE, TK-3301
CORROX CENTRAL
MAHPOREEM

The entirety of this test had been nothing but one surprise after another.

Ronhar had been surprised by Bido Roz’lyn 's rather cavalier attitude toward him and the test he had prepared for her. He had been surprised by Bido's brilliant but reckless flying that she had exhibited nearly every waking moment of the artificial engagement. But most of all, Ronhar had been surprised by the way that she dealt with the members of the Mahporeem Militia down below.

To be fair, he had deliberately left his orders to her vague, because he wanted to see how exactly she would interpret them. After all, what better way would their be for him to get a glimpse into her true personality than an unexpected development like that? Personally, given the way that she had handled herself against the droids and storm, Ronhar was nearly certain that Bido was just going to blast all the members of the Mahporeem Militia into little piles of good, given how hotheaded and eager to fight that she seemed.

He could not have been more mistaken.

Bido did something that Ronhar thought to be near suicidal: she landed her DS-47 TIE Fighter right in the middle of the mob of militia and even went so far as to as to exit the cockpit of her vehicle, though she wisely choose not to leave her ship entirely. Still, it was a massive risk, as half of her body was now exposed to be fired or shot at, and Ronhar doubted that what she was wearing was sufficient to stop a blaster or slugthrower round.

Of course, Ronhar had elected not to follow her, but to continue to observe from above from the safety of the Night Reaver. He was, however, privy to her conversations with the members of the militia thanks to the hidden listening device that he had installed within the DS-47, which was recording everything that Bido Roz’lyn had said the moment she had powered up the craft. It was just one of the many contingencies that Ronhar had planned for, just in case he needed some additional information on the pilot that the test might not normally be able to provide him with.

The actual contents of their conversation were rather...colorful, to say the least, and Ronhar wasn't entirely sure that their confrontation wouldn't end up violent. Should it come to that, Ronhar was fully prepared to go in and save Bido from the mob, since she was a valuable military asset to the Imperial Remnant, albeit a rather eccentric one. Still, losing her would be an unacceptable outcome for today's test, and Ronhar had the Night Reaver discretely aim its weapons toward where most of the militia men were currently standing.

Luckily, it didn't come to that, for Bido was able to leverage the BZ-Ceptor that she had came to the planet on in exchange for getting the militia to leave the area. A surprise, to be sure, but a rather welcome one, though Ronhar wouldn't have minded if she had killed all the militia on the ground. Well, all except for one person...

Well, commander. I don't know what you were expecting, but she's definitely not the bloodthirsty type. I'll send you my recordings from this interaction, and the dogfight, of course so you can analyze them. What did you think of her, anyways?"

That was another of Ronhar's contingencies, a sort of "mole" that he had embedded within the militia months ago. Outwardly a loyal and earnest member of Mahporeem's laborer class, Jord Du'mas had secretly been on Ronhar's payroll for quite some time now, though whether or not it was by his choice was currently a mystery. Whatever reason he had to work for Ronhar, he did his work well, though Ronhar thought he could get a bit curious for his own good.

"What I think of Bido Roz’lyn is not your concern, Jord Du-mas", Ronhar said sharply as he shut down the conversation almost immediately. "Still, you have done good work today. I want that BZ-Ceptor brought over as soon as possible, after which you will receive your payment. You may consider yourself dismissed.

Still, he had brought up a good point: what exactly did Ronhar think of Bido Roz’lyn ? Honestly, if it weren't for the fact that she was such a gifted pilot, he would have had her removed the testing grounds almost the moment that she had landed. Yet, that being said, there was no denying that she had a talent for flying, and despite his reservations, she did have some sort of method to her madness.

A debriefing was most definitely in order. Ronhar directly contacted Bido Roz’lyn .

"That will do, Captain. Land your ship at the following coordinates and power down your craft's engines. We will begin the debriefing process momentarily, I expect a full account of all your actions here today."

With that, Ronhar and the Night Reaver flew off to a different location from where they and Bido had started, fully expecting her to follow him...

TAGS:
Bido Roz’lyn