Leading Crewman Dyr'Jin walked into the simulator room and saluted the man sitting behind the console. After flipping a switch and watching a readout for a moment the man saluted him from his chair. Turning back around he watched the readout as he adjusted a dial slowly counter-clockwise.
"Dyr'Jin, nice to see you again." The same Lieutenant said from his previous simulation run. "I know your hopes were up to fly the Defender last time, but you've not earned that honor just yet."
Scral made no comment as he ignored the memories he held in check by sheer force of wil. The man looked at him for a moment before tapping something on a keyboard. He felt the rooms air circulation systems kick on as the simulator started up. The temperature dropped slowly to adjust for the heat created by the electronics under the floor.
"Today's mission is a simple one, and since you fly the Interceptor you should have no problems. Destroy the three X-wings, and off you go." The unnamed Lieutenant said dismissing Dyr'Jin.
Walking up the short ladder, Scral dropped inside the cockpit of the Interceptor and sat in the flight seat. Placing his helmet over his head he locked it in place, then began the pre-flight sequence by rout memory.
He felt the simulator start up completely as he locked in the last harness across his chest. Dialing down the inertial dampeners, he grabbed the yoke just as the blackness of the cockpit windows was replaced by the swirling tunnel of hyperspace.
Looking over at his diagnostic screen he noticed he only had the basic weapons setup. Four wingtip SFS L-s9.3 laser cannons. No missiles, and the chin mounted weapons ports were empty. Shield strength was nominal, but still no nice particle shields to play with.
[/i]Well, at least I have weapons at all. They could want me to destroy 3 X-wings using asteroids or something.[/i] He thought to himself. He glanced at the mission counter and blinked as it read four hours.
"You have go to to be kidding me." Scral said. "I really hope they do you want me to stay in this damnable cockpit for four hou..." His last comment was cut off as the TIE suddenly dropped out of hyperspace.
He heard alarm klaxons going off, pulling back a lever he side-stepped the fighter just as the three X-wings shot past the space he had just vacated. Yanking back the throttle he was pushed back into the seat as the Interceptor quickly accelerated to its top speed of 125 MGLT.
Angling around to the right X-wing, he brought the targeting reticule over for the optimum firing angle. Linking all four of his lasers for quad fire, he waited another second before squeezing the trigger.
The X-wings shields quickly depleted under the strain of the energy rounds. He wondered if the pilot screamed just as the X-wings exploded. Spinning his TIE up and over he glanced at the debris cloud before flipping back around.
By this time the remaining two X-wings had separated into opposite directions. With only the wing-tipped laser cannons his TIE was much faster then the aging stunt fighters. Pulling back the throttle he started randomly jerking the fighter in all directions, hoping it would look like something had gone wrong.
It took one of the reshies a moment to see what was wrong. Scral refrained from smiling as he watched the X-wing slowly come around to get into a firing position behind him. He kept the act up as the proximity alarm went off again.
Chopping the throttle he pulled back a lever that flipped the craft 180 degrees in a matter of two seconds. With his inertia he was still flying forward, which was now in reverse to his current direction.
He resisted waving at the X-wing as he fired the quad linked laser cannons. The rebel pilot had no time to react, or even put more power into his forward shields before the beams of green shot through his cockpit.
Scral flipped his TIE over again and gave her throttle as the x-wing just began drifting slowly. He angled around to look at the X-wing. The cockpit was now just a mess of melted slag, the astromech droid behind the pilot missing its head.
Breathing slowly he glanced down as his scanners just as his ship was rocked by the last X-wing coming from directly above him. His shields went red as the fighter roared past, heading below him at top speed.
He brought his TIE into a steep dive angling behind the X-wing. He watched his shields fluctuate, flicker once then die completely.
"Nice shot." Scral said to himself. "One more volley and I would of been slag myself."
This X-wing seemed different somehow, its pilot skilled and almost inhuman in how it was flying. Scral brought his craft behind the jinking X-wing, the targeting computer was having fits trying to get a lock. Squeezing the trigger he began bracketing the X-wing with green bolts of energy. He noticed he scored a few hits on the crafts shields, but never enough to collapse them.
He followed the X-wing through a series of hairpin turns, that caused him to notice something. For some odd reason the pilot was treating dog fighting in space, the same as you would in a planets atmosphere.
Chopping his own throttle he nosed his TIE around to where he thought the x-wing would end up at the end of his current maneuver. Selecting single fire, Scral opened fire a second before the enemy craft flew through the space he had selected.
He took a deep breath as the X-wing seemed to rock back and forth as her internal systems went haywire. A second later one of her engines went critical and she exploded, sending debris and slag in all directions.
The simulator went dark just as he was bringing the TIE up and over the expanding field.
"Nice work. It's not often we see someone able to tell the difference between atmospheric and space dog fighting. Same set of skills, different tactics." The still unnamed Lieutenant said into his comlink.
Scral began unbuckling his harness as he smiled to himself.
- OOC:
- Word count - 1044.
