“How long have you known him”

Visha smiled and almost chuckled, “Since I was a small girl, just a child”

“You grew up together?”

She finally laughed, “Oh no, He has always been like that, he hasn't aged a day since we met, he's wilder, more savage now, but at heart and in body he is the same man.”

The man turned towards Visha, puzzled.

* * *

“Captain, message from Coronet!”

“Thanks ensign.”

Unheil grabbed the datapad out of the cute ensigns hand and waved her off with a smile. He turned his attention from her great ass to the datapad, it read simply:

          ”Trials to commence at 08:00, on the 22 nd. The Hound is to report to forward command by 06:00 on the 20 th. Good luck and may the stars smile on you Captain.

Unheil snorted at the message and deleted it. He wasn't even authorized to know who was running these war games, but he was supposed to step in line and obey. He gritted his teeth and stared out the view port of his newly assigned CR-90X. He had liked his old ship, it was just a gunship, not as fast as this ship, not even as fast the military CR-90, but he'd liked it.

“Alright, lets get this tub moving, forward command, get us there as fast as this thing will take us there.”

“Yes sir!” The bridge crew yelled in unison. Unheil winced, but stayed on the bridge until they entered hyperspace. He looked around, but there was little left for him to do there, the bridge crew knew their business, he'd basically trained the lot of them, or at least trained them to do things his way.

Unheil turned on his heel and exited the bridge. He turned to his left and took the turbolift down and made his way into his rather small quarters. It wasn't neat, but he rarely turned the lights on, so he rarely had to deal with that, clothes, liqour bottles and weapons lay everywhere, he kicked his way though and plopped down on the bed, closing his eyes before he even finished hitting mattress. He knew no sleep would come, but that wasn't what he was going for either.

However his contemplation was disturbed within minutes by a knock on his door.

“Oh what is it?” he called.

The door open and a young man strode in, his black hair a rough mess, sticking in every direction, a wry smile on his face. “Hiding again.”

“Go away, I'm trying to sleep, crewman, and since when can you just barge into your captians quarters. I should probably toss you in the brig.”

“Shut up.” The arrogant young man said, taking a seat at the small desk, “Just was going to let you know, we're having some problems with the sublight drive, couple of the thrusters keep shorting and causing blow backs.”

“Well fix it, dammit.”

“Oh, aye aye, Sir, Mr. Captain-Man, anything you want, should I get you a hooker too?”

Unheil turned onto his side so his back faced the arrogant crewman, mostly so Matthias didn't see him smile. He was trying to chase the troublesome mechanic away. “Yeah, get me a pair of slippers and some warm milk, would ya. And don't let the door hit ya in the ass on the way out.”

“Ha, Ha,” The crewman called back, “Like you've ever even seen a swinging door.”

“Jackass!” Unheil called back as the door shut.

Unheil actually tried to sleep now, but the engine was bothering him. He tossed around for a bit, then growled. He didn't like being given this new ship, he wasn't exactly a fan of it at this point, experimental models always had problems. Unheil grunted one more time then swung himself off his bed and made for the door. He grumbled through the halls and down towards the sublight monitoring station.

When he got there Matthias was leaning against the wall right outside the door, whistling idly and tapping his foot to the beat. He didn't seem to mind that his captain was marching up on him in a less than good mood. Infact, he didn't seem overly worried about anything. Unheil knew by now that was simply his way, it was one think he liked about the kid.

“Grogen kick you out again?”

“Oh yeah, he's flipping some switches and playing with some dials and being a complete idiot, like usual.”

“Yeah, sounds like him.”

“Oh, yeah, Commander Zackev was looking for you.”

“Did you tell him where I was?”

“I told him you were playing around in the crew quarters, he flipped me sixty creds.”

“Extorsionist.” Unheil snorted.

“Apparently you're very unprofessional, and you're not up to imperial grooming standards.”

Unheil turned to one of the reflective steel door and looked at himself, his hair was long and tangled, his uniform was open and he hadn't saved in several days.

“Fuck 'em.”

Unheil motioned to the Crewman Matthias and opened the door the the sublight monitoring area. Inside were four men hunched around one panel, yelling and arguing among themselves. It took them several moments to realize the captian had entered the room. When they did they all quickly formed to attention. Unheil sneered at their salutes and threw a half hearted one so that they'd sit the hell back down.

“So what's the problem?”

“No problem SIR!” The oldest one yelled. Unheil grumbled. Only thing worse than captaining an unknown boat in a war game, was doing it with the damn incompetent mechanics that went with it.

“Drop the act warrant officer, I'm not an idiot.” Unheil could tell Matthias was behind him, chuckling. “I hear you're having a blowback problem. If there's something wrong with the damned ship let me know.”

“There's no problem, I don't know what you're talking about.” Unheil was growing more and more disgusted. Imperials pissed him off.

“Are you kidding? Then why are you glaring at my junior mechanic?”

“I'm not glaring.”

“You're an idiot.” Unheil had to force his way to the monitor, Matthias helped by showing the group of mechanics a wide smile and separating them from his captain with an arm. “So, um, what I'm looking at, this isn't a blow back?”

They bit their tongues.

“Crewman Battlemont, get ahold of the bridge and tell them to shut down, we need to get outside and do some modifications.”

“Modifications, sounds fun.” Matthias was still grinning like an idiot.

“Yeah, I need you to enlarge a few of the energy bypasses on those engines with the blow back, they aren't venting properly when we enter negative acceleration, so they blow through the retro thruster ports, might have to replace a few vent flaps too.”

“Sounds good Cap'n.”

“I'm going to go take a fuckin' nap.”

“Whatever you say boss.”

Unheil wandered back towards his room, hoping that he could, for at least a little while avoid all the chaos that was going on around him. And he did manage to make it to his room and re situate himself on his bunk. He still wasn't happy.

Recent days had muddled his normal lazy days up too much, there was too much activity, too many imperial officers, too many questions, too much rearranging of the fleet. Currently Unheil didn't know where even half of the Corellian Sector Fleet was, much less why he had to leave the system for some 'war game'. He grumbled to himself as he tried to fall asleep and forget about it.