Author's note: This story starts half a year before the Battle of Yavin and ends with the end of A New Hope. It's in part a role-playing story, and the first adventure is the old classic 'Starfall.' It's a repost from a few years back - when I last submitted it, I put it up in a single document, making it a rather daunting affair. I've put off reformatting it for years and years... and here, finally, it is. :)

It was written in a Golden Age of Star Wars... before Jar-Jar Binks, before the times of cringeworthy dialogue next to hopping giant ticks on green meadows. Let me take you back to a time of Empire and Rebellion, a time of X-Wings vs TIE-fighters, and all that follows!

Enjoy! All comments and reviews very much appreciated! ;)

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Imperial Entanglements

1

'Saaaa-haaaam! Wake uuu-huuup! Good mooooorning!'

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) Samica Trey jumped out of bed, temporarily unsure where she was, then quickly shut off her chrono before anyone in the adjacent cabins heard it. In fact, she doubted anyone on board of the Victory-class Star Destroyer Resolve could have missed it. Raking a hand through her short brown hair, she wished she had just erased the voice-alarm function on the chrono her friend Tass had given her at her graduation.

Well, at least thinking of Tass brought a smile to her face—and there hadn't been many of those since she had been transferred here. Oh, it was not a bad posting—even if the Resolve was 'only' Victory-class—but things had been much easier on the backwater world she had previously been stationed on.

Another glance at her chrono told her it was past time to get ready—forty minutes to the first patrol of the day. The first out of three. She knew they gave her more patrols than anyone else because she was a woman, but she didn't mind it too much. She loved flying, and it kept her busy—and it wasn't as if she missed all that much.

The Resolve's officers' mess was relatively empty at this time, and Samica was grateful for it when she saw her duty roster. Four patrols. The last thing she needed right now was the sneering faces of her fellow lieutenants.

'Bit late for a breakfast, isn't it, Lieutenant?' a voice inquired, and Samica managed not to jump. Commander Norden had a rather unnerving way of creeping up behind your back when you least expected it.

'Yes, sir. I'm hurrying, sir,' she replied when he had waved off her hasty salute. She wondered if she had ever done anything to deserve his mistrust, but once again, she guessed it was just his way of bullying her a tiny bit. Well, Sam, don't complain, she told herself angrily. You could have joined the Survey Corps, which would have suited everyone, but it was your decision to accept this. That's what happens if you finish thirty-seventh out of a thousand. You just don't decline the honour of becoming an Imperial TIE fighter pilot, even if you happen to be a girl. So don't give them the satisfaction and quit—that's exactly what they want.

The dressing room was already empty when she entered and she broke a personal record in pulling on the black flight suit. The other three pilots of her flight group were climbing into their machines when she entered the fighter hangar. At least they didn't try to cause any trouble. Well, that was not fair. They had always been very correct, which was probably more than she could have expected, since if she had to do four patrols a day, that meant they did, too. But right now, they were all only flight officers, who could get into serious trouble if they showed disrespect to a superior officer. Although Samica somehow doubted that the repercussions would be too severe if someone showed any disrespect to her. Which probably meant the respect was real. Miracles never ceased.

Samica keyed the intercom to flight group frequency. 'This is VSD-R-167, report in.'

'VSD-R-168, ready.' That was Caller, her wingman, who was actually two years older than she, but he hadn't left school at sixteen to enter the Academy. That's just two and a half years ago, she thought. Doesn't sound that much. Still – I was so young back then.

'VSD-R-169, likewise.'

'VSD-R-170, I'm ready.' She didn't know a lot about Doyle and Arras, the other two pilots in her group, other than what she'd read in their files, which was little enough. They all seemed to be decent enough fellows, though. She'd always given all she could to be a good officer, and so far, it appeared she had succeeded, at least as far as these three were concerned.

'Flight group alpha three, you have clearance,' came the voice of the hangar flight control officer.

'I copy. Launch.' Samica veered out of the hangar, carefully catching the fighter in the moment the crane dropped it into vacuum. Three TIE fighters screamed out from the Star Destroyer and fell into formation behind her.

Two hours later, they returned to the ship, after another uneventful patrol. In the dressing room, Samica carefully searched for signs of dissatisfaction with the number of patrols still to come, but the others were engaged in a discussion about canteen food, which didn't sound too bad. 'Good work, people,' she said before she left the room. 'See you in an hour.' She returned their salutes and went to get something to eat.

This time, the mess was full—at a table near the entrance, she saw three of her fellow lieutenants and tried to get past them unnoticed when she heard Lieutenant Forit's voice:

'Well, Lieutenant Workaholic! You just can't get enough, can you?'

Samica, for the second time this morning, forced herself to turn slowly. ''Morning, Lieutenant,' she said. 'If you refer to my patrols . . . I like flying.'

Forit made a apologetic gesture. 'Sorry, Trey. No offence?'

She sighed and sat down at the table. Lieutenant Hide made room for her, and she nodded in his direction. He was one of the few people on Resolve she actually liked.

'So, Trey,' Lieutenant Malcolm Downlead leaned forward over the table, 'It does have its advantages to be flying four patrols a day, doesn't it? No need to get any sim-time!'

The others laughed, and Samica managed a grin. 'As I said, I like flying. And it beats the simulator.' She hoped the remark sounded more sincere than she felt.

For the next few minutes, she occupied herself with the food on her plate and was happy to just sit and listen. She noticed that Hide was doing much the same, and she decided she liked him a lot. In any case, he didn't join in their bantering about fellow pilots. Samica wondered what they said about her if she wasn't present. Maybe it was better if she didn't know.

'Hey, Trey,' Downlead's voice entered her musings, 'what about a match of turbo-squash tonight? Unless you're too tired, that is, of course.'

Samica looked up at the tall, beefy man in surprise. It had never entered her mind that Downlead thought much of her, but the opportunity to get some rec time with a fellow officer after hours was certainly worth an hour of sleep. 'Why, yes. I'll be free after 2000 hours. Is that okay with you?'

'2000 it is. But I have to warn you, I'm a lousy player.'

'Good, then you won't beat me all too often,' Samica replied with another grin, one that felt a lot more natural than the last one.

OoOoO

Downlead was waiting for her in the gym, and she felt the .75 gravity as soon as she entered. She was grateful for it, too; eight hours in the cockpit had been harder than she had thought they would be. TIE fighters didn't have inertial compensators, and she doubted she'd have been able to play in normal gravity.

'Fit, Lieutenant?' Downlead asked.

'Ready if you are,' she replied.

It turned out he hadn't lied about his skills; despite her rather poor condition, Samica managed to beat Downlead twice while having to admit defeat only once. After an hour, however, she felt too tired to strike one more ball today, and they ended the game.

Downlead was silent while they dressed again, and she wondered why. She only hoped he didn't entertain any funny ideas about her. Regulations were very strict about relationships between pilots, but even if they hadn't been, Samica didn't feel particularly drawn towards him. If anything was up, she wanted to know.

'Come on, Downlead, what's on your mind?' she asked as innocuously as she could.

He hesitated, fiddling with the fasteners of his uniform tunic, obviously stalling for time, and she began to worry in earnest.

'What's up?' Samica asked again.

Finally, Downlead looked up. 'I need to ask you a favour.'

'What kind of favour?'

'You know we'll be entering real space tomorrow in the Colonies?'

'Yes.'

He sat down on the bench and began to pull on his boots. 'My parents live on Hertes, and I need to contact them. Unfortunately . . .' He shrugged. 'We'll only be near the planet for about half an hour, and that's exactly when I've got a patrol.'

He broke off, looking at his boots as if he was looking for spots. She was surprised to see him so shy; she hadn't thought he was.

'So, what you want me to do is fly your patrol for you,' she finished for him.

He didn't look up. 'Yes.'

'They'll notice when you enter the comm room when you're supposed to be on duty.'

'They won't. Forit is on duty there at the time. He'll cover for me. I'll tell the boys in my flight group as well. They won't turn me in.'

Samica considered. If she entered the hangar with her helmet on, there was no reason anyone had to notice. Still, if she got caught, she would be in serious trouble. But if she really could help someone who could be her friend . . . There were few things she needed more than friends she could trust right now.

'All right,' she said. 'I'll do it.'

Still, all the way back to her cabin, a voice in her head kept nagging at her, and she could only hope that she hadn't made the biggest mistake in her young career.

OoOoO

Samica sat in the cockpit of Malcolm Downlead's TIE fighter and told the voice in her head to stop worrying. There was no way back now anyway. The three other pilots hadn't said anything at all, and the hangar officers obviously hadn't noticed anything unusual. She had been worried someone could realise Downlead should have been taller and certainly broader in the shoulders, but nobody had, and she supposed she was past the worst.

Samica keyed her comm. 'VSD-R-16-ah-3, ready to go.'

The other pilots reported in, and Samica got ready for takeoff.

For years afterwards, she wondered how what happened next possibly could have happened, but she never came to a satisfying conclusion—she simply lost control of her fighter the moment it was flung out of the hangar, and momentum sent her reeling towards her wingman—Downlead's wingman—who demonstrated better reflexes, pulling out barely in time, avoiding collision by centimetres. Warning klaxons wailed in the hangar, takeoff was aborted, and Samica felt her stomach sink down to her knees. This was it. She'd be thrown out of Starfighter Command, maybe even the Navy, and she should have known it. No reason for them to give her the axe just because she was a woman. She'd done it all by herself, and she deserved whatever she got.

Samica became aware of a voice in her intercom, a voice that sounded as if it had been yelling at her for minutes. 'Come in, VSD-R-163! Dammit, what've you been thinking?'

She drew a deep breath to steady herself and let it out slowly before she replied. 'I'm coming back in, sir.'

'You're going to complete the patrol, Lieutenant! Copy that?'

'I copy.' How was she going to explain this to Downlead? 'Flight group alpha two, form up on me.'

'Returning into formation, sir.'

Samica established a comm link to her wingman—the pilot she'd almost killed. 'I'm sorry, one-sixty-four.'

There was no reply.

She completed the patrol in a daze, wondering what she was going to tell Captain Kolaff. If Downlead backed her story, maybe there was a chance that he would not send her home.

She returned to Resolve's hangar, hurrying to the locker room. She was looking for Downlead when a voice blared over the ship's intercom: 'VSD-R-163, report to the bridge at once!' So much for any hope she might have entertained about the Captain's lenience.

An arm grabbed her from behind, and she whirled to see Lieutenant Downlead's face contorted with fury.

'Dammit, Trey, can you tell me what the hell that was supposed to be?'

'I—lost control during takeoff—I'll explain to the Captain—'

He let go of her arm, snorting with disgust. 'I'll go to the Captain.' He turned and trudged off out of the locker room, leaving her staring after him.

Samica swallowed hard, forcing herself to calm. At least he was decent enough to take his part of the blame. That was more than she had dared to hope for.

She had just finished dressing when there was another announcement over the intercom:

'Lieutenant Trey, report to the Captain immediately!' Steeling herself, she adjusted her cap and went to the turbolift.

Powered doors whooshed open as she entered the Star Destroyer's bridge. Captain Kolaff stood there, glaring, with Lieutenant Downlead at his side and a few aides whose names Samica didn't know.

Samica bobbed her head in a precise salute. 'Lieutenant Samica Trey reporting as ordered, sir.'

He took a few seconds before he deigned to notice her. Though she kept telling herself the gesture was meant to intimidate her even further, the effect was not lost on her, and she did her best not to let her apprehension show.

'At ease, Lieutenant,' he finally said, and she stood at parade rest, not intending to let herself be treated as anything less than an Imperial officer. That shestill was.

'Now, Lieutenant,' the Captain began, arms folded behind his back. Captain Kolaff was an imposing man, as tall as Downlead, but his greying hair lent him even more authority. He was also a man who thought the Navy should be composed of exactly that—men. He had not been thrilled at the thought of having a female fighter pilot on his ship, and despite her good grades at the Academy, he had never doubted something like today would happen sooner or later. Still, there was no doubt that she was good—normally.

'Lieutenant Downlead has just told me that he was not in the cockpit of the fighter that almost crashed two hours ago. He told me you were. Is that correct, Lieutenant?'

'Yes, sir.'

'You are aware that it is against protocol to change shifts without the approval of a superior officer?'

'Yes, sir.'

'Is it true that you approached Lieutenant Downlead and begged him to fly his patrol?'

Samica almost gasped, staring at Downlead in disbelief. The man actually had the gall to smirk! She turned back to Kolaff, and the look on the Captain's face told her he knew Downlead had lied. He was willing to take the opportunity to get rid of—

'Answer me, Lieutenant!'

She knew it wouldn't do her any good if she told him the truth. He had to realise what a pile of rubbish Downlead's explanation must have been.

'We could just as well settle this before a court martial, Lieutenant. Is it true or not?'

She drew a deep breath. 'Yes, sir.'

He turned ice-cold eyes on her. 'You know, Trey, that such an offence is enough for me to kick you from the Outer Rim to Coruscant, to say the least. You are lucky that Lieutenant Downlead asked me to be lenient. Indeed, you are lucky that I don't degrade you. But let me tell you this, Trey—' there was not even the pretence of any respect left in his voice now—'if you ever give me any reason to, I swear I will kick your sorry butt all the way back to Imperial Centre. Have I made my point clear, Trey?'

'Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.' It was a miracle, she thought, that she didn't choke on it. I should have joined the Survey Corps.

He turned his back to her and looked out of the front viewport. 'Dismissed, Lieutenant.'

Samica saluted and left the bridge, somehow managing not to let her shoulders slump. She had never felt so miserable.

OoOoO

The next day, another humiliation awaited her: five patrols, with the official reason to give her 'more opportunity to practise'. She succeeded in avoiding Downlead, Hide and Forit, but she couldn't avoid her squad mates, who, to her absolute amazement, still didn't complain, at least not to her. In fact, they behaved just as they always had, telling jokes and bragging about girlfriends, and she wondered if she should just breach with unwritten protocol and join them in the mess instead of her fellow lieutenants. They were a lot easier to be around, but she guessed that would kill her reputation completely. She was not 'one of the boys'. Nobody past the rank of lieutenant was, and she even less so.

Two days after the disaster in the hangar, Samica was notified of a spontaneous sim training involving her and her flight group as well as Commander Norden. She did not feel comfortable about it at all, but she knew she could do a lot better than they thought she could, and she fully intended to let them see what she was capable of. Caller, Doyle and Arras didn't look too worried—perhaps this was because they knew whatever happened next was her responsibility, and when she botched it, she'd be the one who'd have to pay.

Commander Norden entered the simulator room with his usual air of confidence and just a hint of arrogance, and they all saluted. He returned it and motioned for them to stand at ease. 'We've spent entirely too little time training for situations in which we might be pitched against the new Rebel ships,' he began without preamble, and Samica relaxed a little. Maybe this was just a normal sim run, after all. 'X-wings are faster than Y-wings, still not as fast as TIEs, but they have shields and a lot more firepower than either of those. This means we'll fight in superior numbers whenever we can, but we can't always choose the odds. Any questions so far?'

There were none, mostly because nothing he had said so far was new to them. None of them had ever seen combat against anything smarter than smugglers, who preferred the ancient Y-wings, but they'd flown sims against X-wings before.

'Lieutenant, as highest-ranking officer in your flight group, it will be up to you to get your people out of a situation alive – out of any situation. Questions?'

'No, sir.' She'd been good at this kind of thing back in her first days at the Academy—her teacher, Captain Fel, had sometimes warned her not to put up too much ingenuity under fire, not if she could do things by the book. She was more comfortable with the book now, but she guessed she could still do it her way. Whatever surprise Norden had cooked up for them, she felt confident that she could handle it.

'Into your ships, then, gentlemen.' They were not really ships—the machines in the simulator room were stripped-down TIE fighters that had been decommissioned and redesigned as training units. Samica strapped herself in and put on her flight helmet. From the inside, there was hardly a difference between the sim sphere and a real TIE, and when the projector sprang to life, showing her a star field, she concentrated on the task before her. Running the usual checks, she found nothing out of the ordinary; no asteroid fields, no concentration of mass that could have indicated a black hole—with Norden, you never knew—and all the telltale lamps in her cockpit glowed a reassuring green.

'Report status,' Commander Norden's voice crackled over comm.

'VSD-R-167, ready.'

'VSD-R-168, ready.'

'VSD-R-169, all systems running smoothly.'

'VSD-R-170, you don't happen to have a sandwich, anyone? I missed breakfast.'

'One-sixty-seven. Cut it, one-seventy. This is not for your amusement, you know.'

'Sorry, sir. I'm ready.'

Four TIE-fighters fell into diamond formation, with Samica in front. She was not surprised that the commander wasn't with them. No doubt he planned to lead the attack against her group in person.

'This is one-sixty-seven. One-seventy, tighten it up, we don't want any stragglers. Watch out for enemy fighters, all of you.' Damn, I wish we'd had a proper briefing.

'One-sixty-eight,' Caller's voice came over comm. 'Sir, four enemy ships on four o'clock.'

'I see them, one-sixty-eight,' Samica replied. Four green dots had appeared on her rear screen, the colour indicating enemy ships. Her ship identified them as X-wings. No surprises so far. 'Split up in pairs. Watch your wingman. Good hunting.'

She broke into a dive, Caller right behind her. They'd practised this manoeuvre time and again, but it came as no surprise the X-wings had suspected it. They had a distinct advantage no real X-wing pilot was likely to have: an Imperial commander at the stick.

The Rebel ships broke off into pairs as well, their pursuers hot on their tails, breaking into a series of evasive manoeuvres to shake the TIEs off. Samica stayed behind hers, the targeting brackets on her Heads-Up-Display turning green, and she fired. The green laser beam glanced off an s-foil without inflicting any serious damage. They may not be Y-wings, but their shields aren't bad, either, Samica thought, mimicking the Rebel ship's manoeuvre and preparing for another strafing run when, suddenly, she heard Arras' voice, close to real panic: 'I'm hit! What—'

The red dot that had been VSD-R-169 winked out, and Samica saw a new dot had appeared, this one green. Another X-wing. So that was where Norden was. She could see that Arras and Doyle had managed to finish off one of the X-wings, but that still left her with a three-to-four. Those were not odds she particularly liked.

'One-six-eight, this is lead. Form up with one-seventy. You keep those two X-wings off me, I'll worry about the leader.'

'One-sixty-eight copies, sir,' Caller's reply came back over com, and her wingman veered off, climbing towards Doyle, who was under heavy fire. This is not going well at all.

The lead X-wing had turned and came towards her head-on. It was a manoeuvre he could probably get away with, since Norden was a lot more likely to survive her fire than she was to survive his, so she broke into a spin and throttled speed to make him overshoot. He actually seemed just a little surprised to almost have been outsmarted, but not quite, and he broke off in time, denying her a good shot at him. More confident now, she gave pursuit, checking the tactical chart briefly and feeling her stomach sink as she saw there were only two red dots left. Doyle hadn't made it, which left Caller facing two X-wings. At least his ship seemed to be more or less intact.

Commander Norden's X-wing jinked in front of her, and she bet he didn't like it a bit, but she was the one who could dictate speed. Several times, he tried to shake her the same way she'd tried to lose him earlier, but she was prepared for it this time, and stayed more or less behind him.

For a split second, she had his ship's cone exactly in her targeting brackets, which was just what she'd been waiting for. Her fire-linked laser cannons pumped green beams of destruction into his unprotected rear, and her screen told her his shields were down. Let's see if we can even out those odds even further. But this time, the commander broke out, catching himself quickly. She hadn't killed him, but she had certainly hurt him, and damage control told her his deflector shields were not rebuilding.

Samica took a quick look at the tactical. Caller had managed to cripple one of the X-wings seriously enough to render it useless, and his ship was still undamaged. She hadn't realised he was quite that good. Talk about ingenuity under fire.

She checked Norden's position and found him out of laser range. Retreated to lick your wounds, have you, Commander? She considered trying another head-on run at him, maybe this time, with his shields down, it would favour the one with the better nerve. Still, she wasn't willing to wager her sim-life on the chance her nerve was better than her commander's. And his hull was still more reinforced than her TIE's. By the book, Samica. By the book. She brought her fighter around in order to get behind him when a yellow light flashed on her HUD, indicating someone was attempting to get a missile lock on her. Missiles? She'd never heard of a ship as agile as the X-wing that had a missile launcher!

Samica broke off her manoeuvre, and the yellow light faded. She had to get in to Norden, and fast, when he could finish her off conveniently from five klicks away! That was something which had never been said during briefings, and Samica wondered if these sim X-wings were based on new Intel data or just Norden's desire to catch her with her trousers down. Well, so far, he hadn't. And if she had a say in it, he wasn't going to.

Closing the three klicks until Norden's fighter came in her laser range again was more of an adventure than she'd cared for. The yellow light winked on and off again at least three times, but constant jinking on her part didn't let him get a proper lock on her, and when she was at two klicks, he switched to lasers, planning to place the killing shot down her throat.

She had no intention to let him. Instead of returning fire, she broke into a sharp dive, spinning her ship around to get behind him once again. For the second time today, he hadn't expected her to break. I'm not that greedy—and not that stupid. She knew he probably was the better shot, but she began to wonder whether she was the better flyer.

He carried through the manoeuvre he had started to fly just before she broke, and it brought him directly in front of her lasers. She fired, but the distance was still too great; the beams lancing past his fighter without inflicting any damage. But she was faster, and it would only be a matter of time before he was in range.

'Lead, this is one-sixty-eight. Need help?'

She couldn't believe her ears. Caller had actually done away with the second X-wing, with not as much as a scratch on his ship. He was still well out of range, but he was steering towards her.

'Attack formation green, one-sixty-eight. I'm going in first.' She wondered if Norden was listening in on their comm traffic. If he did, he knew they were going to do the 'trap'—she would get in front of his ship and draw his fire while Caller would shoot at the X-wing from behind. Normally, he shouldn't know—this was a simulation under combat conditions, and a Rebel pilot stood hardly any chance to make any use of the scrambled Imperial codes. Still, Samica doubted Norden was following Navy regulations here. Not that it was going to avail him anything. This was two-to-one, this was what she and Caller had been drilled in, and she was not going to let the initiative be taken away from her.

There was not much Norden could do with two TIEs on his tail, and he knew it, so he tried to break and take his pick at them one at a time. Now, however, he had to foresee two enemies' reactions, and Samica managed to get off another shot at his ship. His hull was down to 50%. Just one or two more hits . . .

Suddenly, the canopy popped open, the projection of the star field before her died, and she heard once again the noises of the simulator room surrounding her. Norden had aborted the run. Not a surprise there, either.

Commander Norden arrived at her TIE, and she almost flinched. He had the looks of a rancour ready to sink his teeth into whatever was unlucky enough to cross his path.

'What have you learned today, Lieutenant?' he asked, and she thought she could hear his teeth grind.

'To watch my back, sir,' she replied quickly, and without any further comment, he stormed from the room.

Arras, Doyle and Caller emerged from their simulators, the former two a bit subdued, Caller grinning hugely, black hair tousled, blue eyes twinkling with pride. She realised he might just have saved her butt from being, as Kolaff had so aptly put it, kicked all the way back home to IC.

'Nice work, Caller,' she told her tall wingman with a heartfelt smile.

'Thank you, sir,' he replied, still grinning.