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In-Flight Maneuvers	By : CrystaNovelli Category: Star Wars (All) > General Views: 6699 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own the Star Wars movie series, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-In-Flight Maneuvers
- 1
Title: In-Flight Maneuvers

Author: Crysta Novelli jedicrysta@yahoo.com

Characters: Luke and Mara Jade Skywalker

Category: Humor, Romance

Rated: NC-17

Archive: If you want it, but please ask first so I can say yes and visit occasionally. :-)

Feedback: Feedback is such a wonderful thing... You ever notice how you can never get too much of it?

Disclaimers: I don't own any of them, although I wouldn't mind having Artoo to help me out at work... Luke belongs to Mara and Mara to Luke. Oh, and I guess they both belong to George Lucas and Tim Zahn... Blame for this fic falls on Sherry, who provided the bunny, and Lori, who fed it.
Summary: Luke and Mara test out a new X-wing prototype. This is a sequel (sort of) to The Christening, which can be found at
http://starwarschicks.com/sithchicks/fiction/christening.htm
Reading The Christening first will make one scene of this fic make more sense,
but it isn't required to understand this one, since it's about different
characters completely.

"Tikiar flight, this is Control. Status?"

Luke Skywalker checked his flight panels over as Chief Engineer Sreikan's voice came over his comm unit.TikiTikiar One," he replied. "Everything looks good here."

"Tikiar Two, likewise," a female voice responded next. "I'm good to go."

"You're cleared for flight then, Team. Fly safe, have fun, and may the Force be with you!"

"Acknowledged, Control," Luke responded. "We'll bring you a full report when we return." And with that, he shunted power to his repulsors and lifted the X-wing off the duracrete floor. Angling the ship towards the open hanger doors, he increased power and escaped through them to the atmosphere beyond.

The pilots of Tikiar flight consisted of Luke and his wife, Mara Jade Skywalker. Tikiar was the code name given to a new experimental X-wing, and he and Mara had been assigned to make the first test run of the new fighters. The engineers had developed two prototypes, and when they had them ready for testing, retired X-wing aces Wedge Antilles and Tycho Celchu were away on vacations with their families, while Rogue Squadron was assigned to the Star Destroyer Lusankya and unable to get away for the next several weeks. As a result, and a little bit of being in the right place at the right time, the opportunity to test the new prototypes had fallen into the hands of the Jedi Master and his wife.

Luke had at first been reluctant to test them when he'd discovered they were an enhanced and slightly redesigned version of the T-65d A1 model. The biggest difference between these fighters and the original T-65c A2 model was that the new design featured an enhanced computer navigational system and did not require an astromech unit to pilot them. The T-65d A1 hadn't gone over well with Luke, as all of the original models had been rigged with hidden failsafe bombs designed to destroy the ships and kill their pilots. Luckily for the Jedi, his detonator had malfunctioned, and he'd survived when his exploded. His reluctance to test the new models remained though, and only an intense amount of teasing by his wife had finally convinced him to agree.

So now here they sat, strapped into the cockpits of Tikiar One and Tikiar Two, swooping away from the planet just like the graceful creatures they were named for. Artoo had remained behind, much against his will, but Luke had quite firmly pointed out that while the cockpits in the new prototypes were larger than usual, there still wasn't enough room for Artoo to come. Mara, on the other hand, had been quite happy to leave him behind. He'd been nothing but trouble so far that day, and she'd had enough of listening to his concerned bleeps and whistles over Luke's safety in the Tikiar ships. The little droid certainly gave new meaning to the term "paranoid".

"Ready to see what these things can do?" Luke asked, his ship's communication system picking up the audio feed and sending it directly to Mara's ship. They were far enough above the planet's surface now to begin testing the fighters' performance in atmosphere.

"You bet!" she responded brightly. Mara reached out through the Force and smiled when felt Luke's sense meld with hers. Those engineers wanted to see what these things could do? She hoped they had the holocams rolling!

In perfect unison, both Jedi gripped their flight sticks and turned their c int into tight barrel rolls, then swooped down and starboard in a giant arc, continuing the roll. They descended several thousand meters, then straightened out and pulled back on the stick, sending the ships soaring back up towards the greenish sky overhead. They rose five hundred meters, then simultaneously hit their left rudder hard and killed their thrust, causing the ships to make a sharp ninety-degree turn to port. Throttling back up to full speed, they then sped away towards the horizon.

Luke was quite impressed to see that the top speed on the fighters was approaching twelve hundred kilometers an hour. The top speed of his own outdated T-65 was only just under eleven hundred kph. Mara was more impressed with the ease of maneuverability of the stick. She'd spent hundreds of hours in Z-95 Headhunters, and this ship flew like a dream compared to those X-wing predecessors.

They maxed out their speed, tthrothrottled down and pulled back on their sticks, sending the fighters into tandem loops, soaring high into the atmosphere. At ten thousand meters they leveled the fighters off, but remained inverted. Large gray clouds passed beneath their canopies as they headed back towards the development facility. Directly over top of the facility, they again executed duel barrel rolls before reining the ships into tight, sweeping loops, and heading back towards the planet.

The pair executed a few more series of complicated maneuvers, fully getting a feel for the craft they flew and testing out the sensory package the fighters were equipped with. Both pilots had to admit they were impressed with the functionality of the prototypes, while the engineers were blown away by the skill of their test pilots.

Finally, Luke and Mara were ready to test the ships in space. Luke radioed Control and informed tof tof their destination, then both fighters soared through the atmosphere toward real space. He started to ask Artoo to calculate their short jump out of the system to test the hyperdrive and navigation equipment, then realized his astromech droid was still back at the hanger.

Mara laughed over their open channel. "Don't worry, flyboy, I'll handle it," she ribbed him, already busy making the calculation. The computer was fast, and she'd already located their destination. "How about a short jump to the next system?" she asked. "There's nothing there but an uninhabited planet, but it'll only take about ten minutes to get there once we make the jump, if these hyperdrives are as fast as the engineers were bragging."

"Sounds good to me," he agreed. "Better relay the coordinates to Control in case something happens to these things," he suggested.

"Done," she responded, punching the button and sending the coordinates to both Luke and Control.

"Got it," he replied upon receiving the transmission. "Ready to run?" he questioned.

They'd cleared the gravity well of the planet in record time. Mara noted that the Tikiar ships were almost as fast as her own Jade Sabre. Almost.

"Ready when you are!" she called back. "See you in ten minutes!"

"Looking forward to it!" Luke returned, then simultaneously they pushed the levers forward and disappeared in a flash of vanishing ion trails.

Nine minutes fifty five seconds later, both Skywalkers watched their chronos count down to zero. Pulling their hyperspace levers backwards, the starlines reverted to distinct pinpricks of light framing a large brown spherical mass of what looked like solid rock.

"Hello there, Skywalker," Mara greeted her husband over the comm, flicking it and all her sensors on as she reverted to real space.

Luke did the same, and returned his wife's greeting. "Nice to see you again, Red. I missed you," he joked in response.

"I don't know how you fly in these things all the time," Mara commented. "They are so lonely!"

"Well, I usually have Artoo to keep me company," he pointed out.

"True," she responded. "And knowing that tidbit, I now understand why you're so strange," she quipped.

"Hey!" Luke exclaimed in a hurt tone.

Mara giggled. "Doesn't appear to be much atmosphere down on that rock," she noted then, checking over the scanner readings.

"Nope," Luke replied. "Plenty of junk floating around out here to use for target practice though."

The planet itself was entirely unremarkable. A solid core of carbon, nitrogen, silicon, and various metallic elements, it boasted a very light atmosphere of oxygen and nitrogen, very little vegetation, and even fewer life forms. It had no moons, and they couldn't see any other planets in the system from where they'd entered. The most remarkable feature of the system before them was that the planet had a ton of space junk floating in orbit around it. Some sort of huge battle must have had taken place here sometime in the past, the combatants leaving the rotted out hulks of destroyed ships behind to float in endless rings around the desolate orb.

Each pilot powered up their weapons systems and shields to full, then flicked the switch to split their S-foils. Kicking full power to their ion engines, they both charged in towards the planet. They headed off in opposite directions, taking strafing shots at the ring of floating debris. Crimson bursts of energy vaped small pieces of scrap metal into oblivion and sent larger pieces tumbling out of their forlorn orbits. Some pieces drifted in closer to the planet where they would eventually pick up speed and crash down to the surface, while others wafted further out into the void of space.

Mara located a large, hollowed out buith ith her sensors that appeared to have been a rather impressive freighter in another life and decided to test out the two proton torpedoes the engineers had equipped her with. Because the freighter had no active heat source, the targeting system didn't get an automatic lock, but the engineers had improved on the basic Fabritech targeting computer and she was able to pick it out of the debris field from a safe distance away. The lights on her HUD went from green to red and she hit the trigger, sending a deadly cylinder rocketing away from her fighter. It hit the lifeless shell and exploded into a brilliant display of light and heat.

Enjoying this test flight thoroughly, Mara let out a cheer as she stomped down on her starboard rudder pedal and swung the ship around. She heard a similar exclamation from Luke as he tested one of his torps and checked her HUD. The computer pinpointed his location as almost twenty clicks away.

"Coming at you, Luke," Mara called, checking her shields over. "Let's see what these shields are made of, shall we?"

"You got" h" he replied, checking his own systems over and altering the fighter's course so he was on a direct head-to-head course with Mara. The turbo lasers on the Tikiar prototypes were top of the line. Now they'd see how well the shields held up against them, trusting in the Force to control their shots and warn them before anything dangerous happened.

Half a minute later they were finally within firing distance of each other. The crosshairs on Luke's HUD centered on Mara's speeding craft. His targeting lights flashed green, indicating a lock, but a moment later she began firing, her lasers cycling singly to do the least amount of damage. The collision course they were on caused each other's laser fire to interfere with the targeting computers, preventing a direct firing lock on the other craft. Luke gently nudged his stick to the right, because he only wanted to execute glancing blows. A full on blast from the lasers could punch right through these shields, and right thought Mara's cockpit if that happened.

The shots from Mara's fighter danced off his canopy as he sped towards her. Luke kept his finger on the trigger, his lasers cycling rounds of single shots ahead of him. Glancing at his display, he was surprised to find his shields still at ninety seven percent efficiency, despite the barrage of fire directed at them.

Suddenly Luke's finger dropped off his trigger as he felt a huge tremor in the Force. The light show aimed at him ceased as well, followed by a loud curse.

"Son of a SITH!!" Mara exclaimed, grabbing her flight stick with both hands and jerking her fighter out of the path of Luke's oncoming fire. The red bolts stopped as soon as she pulled away, but it was too late.

"Mara?" Luke's concerned voice filled her cockpit. "What happened? Are you okay?"

"The kriffing shields failed on me," she cursed angrily, punching up diagnostics as she spoke. "One of your last shots made it through and scorched part of my ship. I don't know what it vaped yet, but judging by the flare in my danger sense, it wasn't something minor."

"Mine failed too," he responded tersely. "They were at ninety seven percent, and then nothing. I don't think I sustained any serious damage though... except my subspace radio seems to have shorted out..."

"Okay, damage reports rolling in," Mara replied, and groaned at what she saw. "Luke, this isn't good... Whatever you hit had to have caused a chain reaction of some sort, because this is ridiculous. My shields are only coming back up to one quarter power, I've lost the port dorsal engine completely, my sensor package is giving me impossible readings, and my nav computer isn't functioning at all."

"How's your hyperdrive?" he questioned.

M>
Mara hit some buttons and swore again. "Not responding. And neither is my subspace radio," she sighed. "Looks like I'm stuck here, since neither of us can call for help," she fumed. "I guess I'll just sit back here and relax while you go for help."

"Excuse me?" Luke asked, switching into over-protective husband mode. "You don't seriously think I'm going to leave you alone in an empty system in a half dead ship, do yo
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In-Flight Maneuvers