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The Sullustan considered. “Starboard turret sticks,” he said. “If it keeps doing that, we’re going to get our butts shot off.”

“Well, talk to your chief mechanic.”

The Sullustan’s lips twisted, an expression of dissatisfaction. “Wanted to know if turrets on the other Alephs were sticking. If so, bad sign.”

“I’ll ask. All right, this run is done. Bring her in.” The X-wing abruptly veered away, banking back toward Tralus and the vessels orbiting her, including the Mon Cal carrier Blue Diver, Syal’s new home.

Jealous, Syal watched the nimbler snubfighter maneuver. She slowly began to turn in its wake. Her Aleph starfighter was capable of getting up to tremendous speeds—Eta-5 interceptor speeds—in atmosphere, but was so much more massive than the sort of craft she used to fly that simple banking maneuvers took much longer. The lateral thrusters with which she’d been dodging incoming fire just weren’t the same as native nimbleness. She clicked her comm board over to receive only and said, “I still hate it.”

“Me, too.” Zueb nodded vigorously, causing the fleshy folds of his face to wobble.

“It’s like flying a freight speeder. Which I’ve done.”

“On Corellia?”

Syal nodded. “Just a job. To save up credits for my education.”

“Your father is a famous retired general and you have to pay for your own education?”

“Not exactly. Every credit I put into my education fund, he matched with four. But I had to earn. That’s the Antilles way: no easy path.” Oriented on a course to intercept Blue Diver’s orbit, she switched control over to the black-and-yellow R2 astromech situated in the well between and behind the pilot and gunner’s seats. “By the way, thanks.”

“For?”

“Not making a deal of my being Corellian. Or being a famous general’s daughter.”

Zueb waved her remarks away. “I’m taking long view. You’re not Corellian daughter of famous general. He’s father of famous Twee test pilot. Just wait.”

Syal grinned. “I like your attitude.”

Test pilot. Her father had done some of that, too, over the years, but probably hadn’t done so in a vehicle like the Aleph. By comparison with the X-wings that her father so loved, the Aleph-class starfighters were flying tanks. Heavily armored two-crew craft with overbuilt generators, the Alephs had been designed in the last months of the Yuuzhan Vong war, more than a decade before, as a one-to-one match for the Yuuzhan Vong coralskipper, a massive single-pilot organic starfighter protected by thick shells and by voids, mobile singularities that could slide in front of incoming lasers or missiles and swallow them completely.

The Alephs didn’t have any defenses that esoteric. Instead, they relied on their thick hulls and on shields powered by those overbuilt generators. Weapons included two turrets, one on either side of the ball-shaped cockpit, each equipped with quad-linked lasers—lasers that could be unlinked, permitting an unpredictable spray fire pattern, an option to confound those coralskipper voids. Forward were the explosives tubes, one for concussion missiles and one for proton torpedoes. All in all, the Alephs packed a heavy punch—heavy being the operative word for much of the vehicle’s performance.

But—and Syal winced—it was a shame the Alephs looked so blasted stupid. With their ball-shaped cockpits, reminiscent of TIE cockpits but larger, and the circular transparisteel viewports before both the pilot’s and gunner’s seats, with the smooth ball cockpit lines graduating to two trailing thruster pods narrowing the farther they were from the cockpit, and with the turrets to either side of the cockpit, the Aleph looked like nothing so much as the head of a gigantic Twi’lek, trailing its head-tails behind and wearing clumsy earmuffs. It was no wonder the Aleph test pilots and just about everyone else who saw them referred to the craft as Twees.

Still, flying them was better than flying garbage scows, rescue shuttles, or tugs.

Test pilot. Syal considered that. Much as she’d come to dislike the Twees in the few days she’d been flying them, she realized that it wouldn’t be fair