"I hear you, Squire Three. Adjusting heading."
Khoovi gripped the controls of the Headhunter lightly.
Now it was down to whether they could pull off the strategy.
"I hear you, Squire Three. Adjusting heading."
Khoovi gripped the controls of the Headhunter lightly.
Now it was down to whether they could pull off the strategy.
watching them while puffing on his smoke Xynn snickered when he noticed how well they were doing for a bunch of piss ants. Tilting his head when he noticed the banter from one to the other and grinning meticulously as if he just gained knowledge from one of his many holo-books. He knew this would be an interesting ride, so far its been eventful.
Can't wait for one to die out there his mind scoffed as he stood watching while making mental notes to their lack of discipline. "You boys really are bad at this" he commented and put his smoke out in his palm and placed the remains behind his ear and crossed his arms taking note of everything they made any attempt at... Studying it all.
Edited for typo.
"The cadets are performing flight simulations with the Baron. I am sure they would like someone with experience for explanation."
Palara Iscandar, Knight of the Imperial Throne and one of the order's founding members, veritably stalked down the corridor to the simulation training centre. It was one of the things that remained mostly unchanged from the Citadel's time as the headquarters for the Imperial Inquisition; not in the same place, but as far as layout and what was on offer, she almost found herself forgetting she was an Imperial Knight when she spent an extended amount of time there practising.
Ze Baron is more zan capable of teaching and explaining his course, she thought to herself, her mood ever-darkening at the thought of wasting her time when it was so patently unnecessary.
She sniffed slightly, her frown deepening as the sharp smell of smoking leaf grew heavy. She turned into the lecture hall, and let her eyes roam over the gathered students and a few others, until her eyes fell upon the perpetrator, sharpening with intent as she stalked up to him from behind.
"You boys are really bad at this," he commented, giving her a brief sense of pleased satisfaction at what was coming. She reached out into the Force, and none too gently pulled the cigarra from its perch in the man's ear, tugging on his ear like a thunderous mother bringing a malcontent child to heel, pulling him around to face her.
"Zat is easy to say when you are not ze one in ze simulation," she said, her voice as sharp as a Mandalorian's knife. The cigarra floated in the air between them. Her gaze shifted to the half smoked stick for a moment, and then resting back on him. "I do not see you instructing zese classes. Per'aps I should 'ave Knight-General Atrapes interview you for lecture duty?"
She released his ear. She would not do such thing to the man, yet. Her moods were not sufficient basis for inflicting torture upon those who displeased her.
"If you must indulge such a nasty 'abit, do it in ze rooms and sections set aside for such activities. If any of ze cadets, such as Cadet Wan, find zemselves doing poorly because your actions are impeding zeir senses, I will reprimand you most severely."
The cigarra, still floating, fell into itself, seemingly crushed by nothing until it was a tiny useless ball of leaf and paper and filter. It then floated serenely back to the man.
"Take it," she said. "If you do such a zing again, never mind if I 'ave seen it or not, I will not 'esitate to make a similar example of you as is being made of ze cadets now."
feeling the smoke being taken from its place Xynn smirked arrogantly as it had been so long since a challenge had come. Shifting his body language as he felt the rude and unnecessary contact being made he allowed himself to "come to hell" in front of the alien while allowing himself to remain amused.. He enjoyed confrontations.
"Zat is easy to say when you are not ze one in ze simulation," The red skinned alien said I'd say that's not such a bad thing he shot back in with a calm demeanor. "I do not see you instructing zese classes. Per'aps I should 'ave Knight-General Atrapes interview you for lecture duty?" I've just arrived he retorted and snatched the cig from the air prematurely Appreciate you keeping it safe he mocked.
"If any of ze cadets, such as Cadet Wan, find zemselves doing poorly because your actions are impeding zeir senses, I will reprimand you most severely." this part he found the most amusing and held himself back from commenting as he knew it wouldn't end in a positive manner. Collecting himself he simply replied while ending the mild conflict I apologize for my rude behavior he then turned on his heel and returned to studying the simulation.
"Contact three five zero mark zero one zero." The Baron barked into his squadron's tightbeam comm link, spotting the familiar shape of a TIE interceptor through the detritus, sitting in spy position.
"Bad read, squad leader." Vassal Two came through sounding snowed under on the line. Tadriin thumped the comm box. At this range, picking up any signal interference seemed highly unlikely, but there wasn't time to question it. Instead of competing with the increasing squawk on the line, the Baron issued a text command via a HUD hotkey. Nexu maneuver.
The trio of TIE fighters gravitated to the contours of the nearest bit of planetary debris, keeping up their speed as they sharply banked to circumnavigate it. The effect would allow them to hold their position for a few more seconds, allowing the enemy interceptor enough time to react to the reveal of their position. Juddering through the protests of solar panel control surfaces, Ketterzau carefully eased off his sublights only when he had to in order to keep close to the asteroid. The moment they approached the terminus of their orbit, he gave his twin ion engines full burn once again.
"There! He's overshot us!"
"Visual on target."
Blast the damned comms. The Baron thumped his helmet with the heel of a palm before painting the racing interceptor on his group's scopes. The Interceptor had made a sound move to try and get at his flank. If they'd maintained course he would have been guns-on. Instead, the trio of TIE fighters lit out from their hiding place, accelerating on the other TIE from high left.
The Baron didn't wait for the range and the synchronization of his targeting computer. He fired on sight, followed by his wingmen, taking advantage of the lack of return fire and their own high volume of fire to make up for the relative lack of accuracy in the opening attack.
"Contact!" Khoovi shouted, his mind racing with thoughts. He was out in the open; why hadn't they targeted him first? "Squire Three, evade! Break down and left! Squire Two, flank and lock on for missiles."
Khoovi hiked the power to full, and the pod responded with a jolt that was almost exactly like one would feel in an actual Z-95. The asteroids formed an eerie tableau around them as he raced forward to get into range for a target lock. He would have fired as the Vassals had, but he did not have volume of fire to make up for low accuracy.
He'd heard it thousands of times, and had even seen the comparative statistics that showed how ships fared against each other, but stars, TIEs were fast.
Proton torpedoes, not missiles. Hal's mind corrected Khoovi, though he kept his mouth shut. "I copy, Squire Leader," was all he spoke over the comm.
Now it was time to show everyone just why he picked the starfighter he did. True it was an Alliance craft, and not a terribly attractive one at that, but its design held many advantages over his opponents - at least on flimsiplast. Flicking his microphone off, he punched the throttle and his E-Wing tore away from Khoovi's Z-95 at immense speed. The gravity couch adjusted for the increase in velocity, and Hal was pleased to find it also adjusted for the inertial dampeners, especially when he rolled off to the left, pitching himself away for a return angle in to flank. Micro meteorites among the debris close to asteroids pinged harmlessly off his shields, while he gave instruction to his onboard astromech. "R7, list of commands. First, locate and secure a point away from here that we can jump to in hyperspace, and label it Slot A. Second, locate and save an entry point where we first spotted those TIEs, and call it Slot B. We are Tab A. Third, I need to to track all three enemy craft simutaneously, locking on to them for proton torpedoes whenever possible. Give me tone and a craft number when you have lock. Fourth, cycle shields to constantly face toward enemy craft whenever possible, unless I manually override. Got it?"
A series of beeps from the simulated astromech was the pod's reply, and already Hal could see targets being tracked on his HUD. Being based on its technical specs rather than a real craft, Hal's simulated E-Wing turned on a hyperdime, slingshotting around an asteroid to come back on the terrible trio of teacher's TIEs.
Bdeee! "Vassal Two." Tone lock was confirmed, and Hal wasted no time in firing off the first of his sixteen onboard proton torpedoes, while simultaneously locking his trigger finger into full fire mode of his craft's three laser cannons. Despite his dogleg trajectory, he knew he should be arriving at the targets at about the same speed as Khoovi, so they could concentrate their own fire upon the Vassals.
Meanwhile, Hal concentrated on something else, turning up the "static" on his mental link, while also adding in the faintest, "That's two nerfburgers with cheese, one order of nuna wheels, a large fry, and two jumbo Diet Feffs. I'll have your total at the first window."
In the serene beat of silence before being consumed by the storm, Jeryd felt something that made the hair on the back of his neck stand on end: it was like the breath of a stranger, whispering into his ear. His hands twitched in response, pushing just a fraction against the flight yoke. Time slowed, and the moment stretched out before him, while he considered his two options. In the end, the decision was made inside of an instant, and whatever foreign instinct that compelled him to send his interceptor into a dive, he obeyed.
Time resumed in a fever of colour and noise; Khoovi barked orders into his ear, and the ship shrieked in alarm. Into the cockpit flashed the red glare of laser fire as it shot overhead. Pressed against his seat, while computer systems pinged madly all around him, Jeryd latched onto Khoovi's instruction and turned his dive hard to port. The force of the maneuver pulled at his arms and legs, and he had to fight to maintain his course and speed, but maintain it, he did. Around him, there was chaos, and, though none of it made any sense to him, and though he knew he was doomed to fail, Jeryd Redsun was not going to go out without a fight.
The alarms became background noise, the flashing screens, ignored, and, in the gloom of his tiny cockpit, Jeryd gave himself over to the whisperings of a stranger, and pure gut instinct. With a tug on the flight yoke, he pulled up, and up, and over, waiting for the enemy ships to appear in his sights, ready to rain down upon them with hellfire. Maximum speed. Maximum firepower. He liked that. It was as the old Wegman mantra went:
Go hard, or go home.
"Who in the blazes is this? This is a secure instructor's channel!"
The Baron was growing annoyed. Either this was a technical snafu at the most inopportune time, or some merry prankster had mistakenly singled him out as a mark. He'd get to the bottom of that soon enough, but for now, the rigors of combat demanded all of his attention.
The ordnance proximity klaxon flared in the Baron's cockpit just as Vassal two's static-laden line fluttered with "...m locked...". Ketterzau's wingmate spiraled away from the attacking trio as they pushed their advantage on Cadet Redsun's nimble TIE. As the torpedo streaked in for the kill, Vassal Two began to feather his speed down, dancing between a raft of asteroids with a series of rolls and hard turns. Too small, and the torpedo would simply course correct and slip by. Too large and Vassal Two would run out of time trying to get behind. With a last pirouetting spiral, the TIE fighter screamed forward at maximum sublight, putting distance between it and the rock the proton shaved into, triggering a detonation.
While the attack hadn't scored a kill or any damage, it had succeeded in reducing the number of TIE fighters imminently trying to blow Redsun out of the stars to two. The Baron and Vassal Three maintained formation, streaking the stars with laser fire as the Interceptor furiously accelerated to come about. Rather than burn ahead, the two TIE/ln's decelerated slightly, then just as stitching fire began to bark overhead from the Z-95 in their wake, the two TIEs executed a synchronized barrel roll to their port side, slipping just out of arc of Khoovi, who was now dangerously close to shooting the fast-approaching Redsun on accident.
Khoovi grunted in appreciation for Rayner's quick thinking and Redsun's durasteel testicles. None of what he'd expected coming into this had played out, and so now he was attempting to both help get the brunt of the firepower off Redsun and his Interceptor and onto him or Rayner, whose ships could take more damage, leaving the Interceptor to fulfill its most dangerous role: an attacker.
He'd only barely managed to get into range when the TIEs barrell-rolled out of the way of Redsun, leaving him thankful that he'd not attempted to make an attempt at a long range shot; instead he thumbed the control stick and activated his locking system for one of the two missiles the refitted Headhunters now could carry. Foregoing any real attempt to find the Baron, he opted to lock on to the nearest TIE in the two ship formation, and adjusted his vector to keep them in his sights.
Bdeee! "Vassal One"
Hal pulled the trigger immediately, rocketing off the second of his sixteen proton torpedoes. With such an armament onboard, and facing only three opponents, the Nehantite felt zero guilt in melting through torpedoes at such a rate. Had his wingmates been smart and picked E-Wings, too, they could have the TIEs constantly running from multiple torpedoes the entire time. But, no, one of his teammates chose a TIE, and it was time to continue saving his sorry butt.
Laser cannons blasting away at both enemy TIEs as he barreled down on them, Hal awaited target lock on the third TIE, middle finger ready on the fire button for yet another torpedo.
Simple static was enough for his mental link at the moment, with the occasional pop or buzz, as he concentrated on his next move. He knew exactly what he wanted to do, but as long as he was in a unit he had to follow his leader's command. Squad comms were flicked back on, and Hal asked, "Squire Leader, you want me to keep pushing these two, or peel off to go take out our straggler while you and Redsun keep these two entertained?"
When the enemy fighters rolled out of sight, Jeryd gasped. In the split-second he had to think, he tugged on the flight yoke, and watched as Khoovi's ship swept by so close, he could see into the cockpit. Disaster averted, he cursed under his breath, and eased his foot down on the accelerator pad. Already, Rayner's voice was crackling over the comm, figuring out their next move with Khoovi. How did they manage it? The speed of the ships was so overwhelming, and the pace of the action so frantic, it was all Jeryd could do just to react in time to it. Inside his flight suit, he was starting to boil, the heat and sweat making a fetid swamp of his body. Focus, Jed. Focus.
"I'm with you, Squire Leader," he said. Catching up with the Headhunter was child's play for an Interceptor; he reduced his speed, easing himself into position just behind Khoovi. The temporary reprieve allowed him to check his sensors to get a reading of where the enemy fighters had gone. It was all garbled nonsense to him; the spike of adrenaline had left him with all the comprehensive fortitude of a spice junkie. So, in the absence of spatial awareness, he followed his leader. And, judging by his flying, Khoovi had picked up the scent. Behind his helmet, Jeryd grinned despite himself.
The Baron's eyes flashed with a competitor's thrill at the sight of the torpedo lock on his TIE. His entire cockpit pulsed in warning red light. This was where he lived, perched on the razor's edge. An Ace of the Imperial Starfighter Corps only truly felt their element when life and death blurred into the same line. The same moment.
"Vassal three, scrape!"
Twin ion engines burned like stars, propelling both fighters hard through the ether. The Baron stood on his acceleration, his fighter screaming as it crested the limits of it's forward acceleration. It wasn't enough to outrun the torpedo in a straight-away, but as he eclipsed Vassal Three in their dead heat, the Baron banked over his wingmate's vector, creating for the barest of moments, an incongruency in the torpedo's tracking. As the Baron's solar foils rattled against the strain, his wingmate choked his engine, snapping a control jet in a micro burst to position his fighter 180 degrees from vector in a perfect Koiogran turn, lighting the sky with his laser cannons to catch the suddenly-dumb proton torpedo in a thunderclap of detonation.
To the three rallying fighters, the explosion appeared nearly on top of one of the enemy ships. The Baron had gotten away, but he was down a henchman. However, the moment Vassal Three pierced the dying fireball on a frenzied charge ahead, that assumption was put to bed. Spraying fire downrange, it threatened the three Squires in what seemed to be a foolish head-on joust.
That was, until Vassal Two pounced from behind the asteroid it had escaped from previously. It rained murder on a focused strafe towards the E-wing, whose shields had been adjusted front to account for the salient threat. They began to redistribute power to equilibrium, but too little - too late. A shot splashed the fragile rear shields, breaking them. A second shot beheaded the Nehantite's astromech droid in a digital death knell of WOOOAAAAAIIIIOOO.
Vassal Two coolly regrouped and focused. The E-wing danced around it's targeting reticle before sitting squarely center sight with a confirmatory beep.
He fired.
Just as the TIE fired, Khoovi's computer blared a lock tone.
"Missile away!" Khoovi called. "Squire Three, target and fire on the TIE threatening Squire Two! Squire Two, stay alive and break off, but keep yourself a good target; I only need a few seconds!"
The concussion missile tore from the Headhunter and promptly made its way across the intervening space to the TIE (Vassal THREE, the text on Khoovi's display read) racing up to him in what seemed a joust. Khoovi grunted, but trusted the simulation to have kept in mind the durability of the Z-95 in actual engagements and firing his own cannons at Vassal Three before barrelling to the side and performing his own koiogran turn to keep the TIE in his sights, even if the manoeuvre caused him to hold his breath and let it out slowly as stress management.
He fired again.
Hal's day began to sour as he was handed a series of bad things. Bad thing 1: his torpedo missed. Bad thing 2: his rear shields were shot out, and would take a moment to start to recover. Bad thing 3: he lost his astromech, who he had intended to name Reginald, and paint in a garish tropical color scheme. And, bad thing 4: the shitwipe he'd targeted with his first torpedo now had lock on him.
Why can't we have nice things? His higher reasoning sighed.
Because I touch myself at night. His base natures answered.
...you might not be wrong. But shut up, anyway.
With incoming cannon fire, Hal had no time to think, no time to plan, only time to act. He slammed his flight stick forward and to the left, feeling himself lift off his gravity couch momentarily as his ship pulled negative Gs, only to have his near-perfect rump push back into the cushion as he righted himself. No astromech meant no extra targeting, and he still had a TIE on his tail, while his rear shields needed a few more seconds to come back online. "Trying!" he called back over the comms to Khoovi.
Up, down, left, right, Hal's E-wing darted hither and yon to stay out of Vassal Two's sights, yet he couldn't shake him. The knowledge of taking down eight TIEs over Phindarr had filled him with false confidence, bolstered by thoughts of technical superiority (on paper) in his simulated E-Wing, but that arrogant bluster was coming back to bite him, and hard. His course took him in a fishhook corkscrew back toward the center of the fray, just in time to be half-blinded by the massive explosion of Khoovi's concussion missile. It was the opening he needed, and his paw slapped the hyperdrive button.
Astromech or not, his ship still retained the two coordinates loaded into his navicomputer, and during the flash, Hal vanished into hyperspace, reappearing in some quiet starfield moments later.
"C'mon c'mon c'mon!" he growled as his hyperdrive recharge bar refreshed. He'd planned to use the jump as an emergency escape, but now he could use it as a method of ambush, if only he could keep the Vassals distracted. As the hyperdrive flashed green again, he punched it, targeting the point in space they'd first spotted the TIEs, while at last bringing his telepathic A-game.
For those on Vassal Squadron, there was no way to block out the signal in their heads as Hal cranked his volume to eleven. It was on.
"SO TELL ME WHAT YOU WANT, WHAT YOU REALLY REALLY WANT!"
So began the soundtrack to Hal's re-entry into the fray.
"Copy that, Squire Leader."Originally Posted by Khoovi Wan
It had only been a matter of time before he was expected to strike out on his own, again. When the order came, Jeryd sucked in a deep breath and exhaled to steel his nerves. He narrowed his eyes to pinpoint Squire Two's location, somewhere amongst the bustling canvas of asteroids, where laser fire flashed. Between his ill-fitting helmet and the spider web window, his field of vision was being strangled. Instead, instinct led the way, lifting him into a starboard climb at nothing but full velocity. This was his favourite part, the speed. If he could have been simply left to his own devices, to weave in and out of the asteroids, he'd have had a hell of a time. As it was, he was supposed to be saving Kyle Rayner's arse.
There was a flutter from his targeting computer, as Vassal Two swept past his reticle. Everything, thereafter, was instinct. Jeryd followed, drawn towards the enemy fighter by the inexorable pull of violence, he closed a hungry finger around the trigger, and waited. Again, the enemy was in his sights, and the targeting reticle gave an excited trill. A fleeting sound, again and again, as Vassal Two pursued his target with unrelenting zeal. Another course adjustment, another feathering of the accelerator. Vassal Two inched closer into sight, closer...
When the computer bleated it's shoot-you-idiot song, Jeryd squeezed the trigger, and rejoiced at the sight of the four uniform threads of laser fire stitching a ferocious trail in the enemy fighter's wake. Finally, a dogfight! The sound of muffled laughter suddenly rang out from his simulation pod.
"Target jumped to hyperspace." came the static-filled chatter from Vassal Two. The Baron worked against the strain of his solar foils, rocketing around a flotilla of asteroids that would keep him momentarily hidden.
"Dash clever, old boy." Ketterzau muttered to himself.
Just then, the irritating noise from before was dwarfed by a din of unparalleled magnitude. The Baron squinted his eyes, turning an all-channels broadcast on as he completed his circuit.
"Would someone kindly switch that bloody racket off!"
"...repeat, they're all over me!" A bit of chatter from Vassal Three cut through the Baron's irritation, just as his wingmate's comms went dead.
Beyond the Baron's sight, Vassal Three burst free from a near direct hit, ducking just out of the Z-95's blaster arc even as it vented plasma from it's starboard solar array. The pilot within tended to his console, which had lit up with numerous system failure warnings. It left him an easy mark, save for Vassal Two moving in at breakneck speed, switching his engagement priority to the Z-95 after the E-Wing jumped. Feeling the heat around the corner from the pouncing interceptor, Vassal Two hooked right at the last instant, breaking off his attack on the Z as he power banked, kiting his attacker into pursuit.
No sooner did Jeryd move in for the kill than the Baron's TIE fighter swooped over the craggy contours of space debris. He accelerated, then feathered his thrust to fine-tune his trajectory, all the while herding the TIE Interceptor into his gun sights.
Beep
Beep
Beep
Bebebebeep
"Good showing, lad. Off you go."
Vassal Leader's cannons switched to fire link, punching a tandem green death sentence straight through Jeryd's canopy.
"Damn!" he shouted, hearing Jeryd's comm go dead and the comm display indicator itself went dark. "It wasn't supposed to be him!"
He turned as sharply as he could, bringing Vassal Three back into his firing arc; despite its speed advantage, the TIE was venting and the damage was more than enough to make this as good a chance as any to destroy the most vulnerable member of the Vassal squad.
"It was supposed to be me!" he growled. "I'm the weakest link!"
The tone blared, and with a focus he'd rarely been able to attain in high stress situations, fired his shots into the TIE's vector, rather than its current position.
On flimsiplast, the E-Wing was the fastest ship in the simulation. It was also the most agile, the best armed, and the most responsive - all on flimsi, of course. But when a ship may or may not actually exist yet outside of schematics and blueprints, flimsi was the bible for simulation specifications, and Hal pushed his E-Wing to the limits of what that flimsi read.
The engines roared, but he knew they would not give out or suffer stress failure because they were new. Per the simulation, this E-Wing was a brand new craft, with no stress damage and no engine wear; as a one-time use approach, Hal beat the shit out of his simulated craft, tearing a beeline for the damaged TIE. If any of them saw him coming it'd be a miracle. In his head, the cacophonic din screamed louder than his engines, blasting its way into the brains of his opponents while Hal sneered at the loss of Redsun. Damn fool should have chosen something with shields. Without them, the hull of a TIE might as well be the same flimsiplast his E-Wings specs were taken from.
Ahead of him, Khoovi had Vassal Two dead to rights - there would be no escaping the puppy's firepower - so Hal turned his attention to Vassal Two. He could feel the heat building behind his eyes, the shift from pink to red in his irises which corresponded to the fight or flight nature of his race. Flight had been done, it was time to fight. Barreling down upon the healthy TIE, the Nehantite flicked down his eyepiece for manual targeting of his proton torpedoes. He had plenty left, so he might as well use them. Into the horrific, mangled mess of obnoxious pop songs, the sound of a missile lock tone began to sing its own tune, constant and unyielding, before he actually established lock. Vassal Two took the bait, spiraling off in evasive maneuvers, and Hal grinned as he played simulation against reality, keeping pace until he actually had lock. No time was wasted in pressing the trigger, and immediately he attempted a second lock, firing the moment that torpedo had located its mark as well. Drawing every closer thanks to superior speed, Hal then lit up his three turbolaser cannons, stitching a stream of death into the digital field of stars as he hunted down his prey.
None of the cadets would get out of the simulation alive, that much was a given. But from the combined impact of both proton torpedoes and laser blasts, neither would Vassal Two.
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