That new starfighter smell Who: Selene and OPEN What: New fighters Where: Threed Starport When: Morning Rating: PG for Vampire with an attitude will edit if necessary
Not needing to sleep more than a few hours a week had a certain advantage when it came to working around the clock. Like not feeling like a basket case when she was up to see the sunrise. Selene did appreciate the large cup of kaf she was sipping from though. If she'd only found a decent substitute for bacon, it would have been a perfect sunrise. As it was, it was only... very good.
Banshee's cargo ramp was lowered, and she sat on the end of it, feet planted firmly on the ground, and looked, with a little pride, it must be admitted, at two ARC-170s, fresh out of the paint shop, listening to Thing 1 and Thing 2, the Banshee's R4 astromech droids, as they burbled to her in binary, occasionally replying, or chuckling at what they had to say. The starfighters were painted to match Banshee, flat black with dark blue trim. They hadn't been personalized; she'd let Peter take his pick and do what he wanted. During the Clone Wars Razor Squadron had used a screaming rancor paint scheme. That might appeal to River. Selene considered River as her other fighter pilot. The human girl would probably be good at it, like she seemed to be at everything she had done so far. Selene just didn't know if River was suited for fighter operations. It might be she would prefer to stay on the bridge of a bigger ship all the time. She'd ask anyway. If nothing else, they could leave the second fighter on the ground as a backup bird, or run it on a slave circuit.
"Yes, I know fighters are more hazardous to their crew than bigger ships. I haven't asked either of you to transfer, have I? You'll have to work on them, but I want to find two more droids to fly and help you around the ship." Who knew what River might bring back to the ship.
Maybe Sara would want to give fighters a try. The woman had seemed to be overcome by what happened when she went back. Best to give her some time to sort things out. Maybe it was time to look for another pilot. Maybe Buffy would figure out the Jedi thing and be interested. Maybe Peter's damsel no longer in distress. Too many maybes for too early in the morning. Selene sighed and took another swallow of hot kaf and another look at the fighters.
Engines upgraded from 4-series to a pair of 8s. Laser cannons replaced with turbolasers, fore and aft. Better deflectors. New sensor suites in the big forward bays. Almost new astrocomps that were rated for light cruisers. New 1.0 hyperdrives. She'd ended up spending almost what a new 85B X-wing would have cost, but for the credits she'd put together two ships with more firepower and just about as much speed and manuverability as the lighter-armored X-wing. Guns that would punch through pirate shields meant more in her line of work than being able to dogfight with a swarm of enemy fighters. Little gunships. Of course, she was tight on credits again, which meant time to pick up more contracts. Selene had heard there were some new pirates working the Corellian Way out near the rim.
"Your head does sort of stick out of the hull in a starfighter. A little hard to do the job if it didn't."
Other than static runups and the brief test flight she'd taken with each fighter, they were brand new birds. Less than an hour on the clocks. Whichever one Peter didn't want, she'd take up and wring out. See what it could really do. Just before dawn she had brought them over to Banshee from the yard on repulsorlift alone, not wanting to wake any of her crew, wanting to think about what the additions to her fleet would mean for future work. What it might mean if she ever did hear anything from the Resistance. Mythical Resistance, as far as she was concerned. Everybody talked about it in the cantinas where crews gathered, but nobody seemed to have anything concrete in the way of information yet.
"Twice the power of the original engines. About the same fuel consumption. S-foils and fifty years newer technology." She shrugged. "I've never stinted your parts budget. If you two haven't upgraded each other it is your own fault. Work on it."
A few days to work up the fighters and they'd be back in space again. Back on the job. If nobody came out of Banshee soon, Selene would go wake them up. She's finish her kaf first, though.