Sam Jack Dunn sat patiently as the techs, under the watchful eye of one of the Adjudicator’s medical officers, helped him board the number #3 TIE/In simulator cockpit. It felt strange to be sitting in the pilot’s seat of a fighter craft again, and he wasn’t entirely sure he liked it. Still, his psychologist had said that re-acclimatising himself to flying would do him some good, and learning a new skill would help him raise his shattered self-confidence. Personally, he didn’t believe a word of it, but it had to be better than lying in the crowded, stuffy medbay, bored.
Fortunately for him, the TIE Interceptor model he was flying in was a standard Vast Empire variant, without the additional ion thrusters for advanced manoeuvring, or the retrofitted foot-pedals that operated them that he’d bolted onto Cobalt 1. With only one leg, he’d have had a lot of trouble working them properly. In a way, being in a stock-standard cockpit without any modifications whatsoever felt a little like a fresh start. Crikey knew, the former Squadron Commander needed one. Not, he decided, that he was ever going to admit it. There was no way he’d give the docs the satisfaction.
His gloved hands danced over the little cockpit’s controls without his mind bothering to supervise – he’d done this so many times in training sims and war-games that, exactly as the Imperial Academy trainers had hoped it would, the start-up procedure for the ship became a reflex action. His eyes took in green light after green light, moving onto the next move of the dance without missing a single beat. He’d been in TIE Interceptors for long enough to memorize the controls – at this point, he doubted he’d ever be able to fly anything but a TIE. Not after this long.
Main reactor online. Twin Ion Engine online. Sensors online. Targeting systems online. Weapons online. Shield generator ready to be switched on once I’m clear of the hangar. Internal readings say…yep, all systems nominal. Of bloody course they are, the TIE is the most reliable ship in space. Sam thought distantly to himself as one by one, the tiny Interceptor’s systems began to come to life, the hum and gentle vibration of the cockpit around him intimately familiar. The cockpit of a TIE certainly felt more like home than the sickbay. He wasn’t helpless and just waiting here. It was addictive.
Sam wasn’t surprised that Twitch had been caught so many times trying to sneak into the simulator rooms after the battle. He understood how she felt, or at least thought he did. It was good to be back in control of the situation around him again, at least in some small manner. He might have been a mediocre leader at best, but he knew one thing – he was a decent pilot. He even fancied that at his best, he might have held his own against Trykon himself.
Absently, he wondered how the man would have fared against Seeker. Saint One.
He pushed such thoughts away – now wasn’t the time to dwell on the past. He was trying to exorcise those demons, or at least give them a little less ammunition to throw at him. The shrink had been right – he needed to upskill, because if he was ever going to get back in the cockpit for real, he would need to be a lot better than he currently was in order to be able to make a positive difference.
“Adjudicator, this is Dunn. All systems green, awaiting launch clearance.”
Normally, a reply could take a while, but that didn’t happen.
[[“Dunn, this is Adjudicator. You are cleared to launch. Launch in T-minus 5…4…3…2…1…”]]
The moment the countdown ticked down to zero, Sam felt the g-forces push at his chest as the simulated launch rack tossed his fighter forward and slingshot it straight out of the hangar, into the orbit of Abrae below. He’d seen the moon plenty of times before, but he’d never gotten the chance to run the infamous ‘trench’ before. Normally, the final test of the Ground Attack skill was done in person. For reasons obvious to anyone who’d paid any attention to current events, this was impossible.
He pushed the control yoke downwards, and watched the moon fill up the simulated cockpit canopy in front of him as he descended into the moon’s gravity well, on a direct course towards the trench. It was exactly as described – a long, artificial slash in the ice-covered moon’s surface. It looked slippery, but fortunately, he wasn’t going to have to cross it on foot. Worse, he was going to have to fly straight down it, popping any target that so much as blinked at him with one of the four thermo nuclear Proton Torpedoes that sat in his launch bays.
“Allright, let’s get this done.”
The moment his fighter was over the ‘start point’ of the trench run, he pushed the control yoke even more sharply downward, keeping the ship going at full throttle so he would be a harder target for the anti-fighter flak that had already began to fill the sky around him. In the real trench, Ion cannons were used, because they could disable a ship without killing the pilot inside. The pilot was usually forced to eject, though. In the simulation, the bursts were emerald green instead of electric blue. The cannons were shooting to kill.
It didn’t bother Sam Dunn any. He’d already qualified in advanced flight manoeuvres, and evasive action had always come naturally to the former convict – he operated at his best when he wasn’t thinking, and acting purely on instinct was something that he’d always had a particular talent for. One of his training officers had mentioned that he thought best when he wasn’t thinking at all. The contradiction was obvious, but it also managed to get Sam Dunn through the storm of turbolaser fire intact, his gloved hand making minute adjustments to the control yoke as he danced through the storm.
Now this was real racing.
As the altimeter to his right ticked down and the trench’s icy floor seemed to come closer and closer, Sam Dunn’s smile widened a little, his heartbeat picking up from the adrenaline spike as he raced towards certain doom. He still pulled up a little earlier than he would normally have, mindful that the stock-standard VE Interceptor flew more like a TIE Advanced X1 than the factory-model Interceptors, and certainly nothing like the souped-up model that was Cobalt 1. Even with the extra time he’d given himself, his Twin Ion Engine’s exhaust scorched the ice.
“That was too close.” He murmured softly to himself. He doubted that even setting his shields at full front – something that he decided to do the moment he pulled up from the sharp dive – would have saved him from an impact at that speed. Not even Cobalt 1’s ‘Panic Button’ would have gotten him out of that jam. Heh, jam. Sam reflected that jam is exactly what he’d have been if he was a moment later on the mark – a red smear on the ice. Already, the trench was filling his vision. He eased up on the throttle a bit.
No point executing what might have just broken the trench’s dive record if he smashed into a trench wall only moments after. That wouldn’t get him the skills he needed, and it certainly wouldn’t earn him any more self-respect. As much as Sam needed speed, it wouldn’t be his ally in the tight confines of this canyon. He warmed up his targeting computer and armed the first of the four missiles in his launch rack, his keen eyes already searching both the targeting computer’s screen and the cockpit’s canopy screen for a target. No point manoeuvring – there was no room.
This was a different kind of thrill, however. Instead of wide, fancy dodges, he had to be sharp and precise, his hands minutely twitching the control yoke to the left or right as turbolaser bolts streaked towards him and outcroppings of rock and ice threatened to leap out and smack him clear in the face. He couldn’t afford to think about what he was doing – by the time he made a decision and avoided one obstacle, he’d have already hit another three. Instead, he operated purely on blind instinct, letting his body react so that his mind could wander elsewhere.
As tempting as it was to fire back at the anti-air turrets that were pouring laser fire in his general direction, Sam knew he couldn’t afford to divert any power from the shields or targeting computer to his lasers, and if he wasted a missile, he’d fail the mission. At least with the agility of the Interceptor, he was able to keep avoiding the laser blasts that were sent his way. It seemed like minutes before his targeting computer lit up, and the first designated target appeared on-screen – a turbolaser turret! In reality, it had been less than twenty seconds.
Waiting for the targeting computer to acquire a lock seemed, again, to take an age, and Sam found himself sinking his teeth into his bottom lip as he watched the numbers tick down and the targeting computer’s screen resolution become clearer and clearer. His heart thudded in his chest as he kept his fighter facing as straight as possible, only jinking when he was absolutely certain a bolt would score a hit. It was absolutely nerve-wracking, knowing that if he did anything fancy, he’d lose the tenuous lock.
“C’mon…c’mon…just a little more…” He didn’t even realise he was speaking aloud.
Strafing was, Sam Dunn was beginning to realize, every bit as mentally strenuous as dogfighting. In dogfighting, the one with the quickest reflexes, the best ability at prediction and the rare skill of improvisation usually came out the better. In bombing, as Sam Dunn was only now just finding out, the worst enemy wasn’t the opposition: it was yourself. He found himself having to fight down every instinct to evade, to get out of there, to just fire the bloody missile regardless of the targeting solution and bail. He found himself wondering
’And bomber pilots do this every single battle?’A brilliant green Turbolaser bolt flew straight past his fighter’s starboard side, and the sudden BOOM that filled the cockpit was a very rude reminder that sound carries perfectly well in atmosphere. The sudden flash and the thunderclap of sound made Sam jolt in his seat, and it took every single bit of self-control he possessed to keep his hand from reflexively tightening on the trigger. He felt himself tense up, and again found himself being forced to use the one skill he had never really bothered to train himself in: Patience. He had a new respect for bomber pilots.
At that very moment, the targeting computer lit up with a solid target lock, and Sam’s gritted-teeth expression instantly transformed into a feral smile as, like a starving beast released from its cage, he jammed his thumb on the trigger and let loose a Proton Torpedo straight towards the gun battery – a gun battery so distant he could only barely see it when he glanced up from the targeting computer to the cockpit canopy. Immediately, he jinked hard to starboard, and kept one eye on the targeting computer as it tracked the warhead’s speedy progress towards the hostile gun battery.
He needn’t have bothered. He saw the explosion before the targeting computer was able to detect it, and as a fiery conflagration enveloped the distant speck of a cannon and expanded in a ball of fire and twisted metal, he let out a whoop of victory that echoed through his helmet, his face locked into a feral grin of victory. He settled back into his seat and armed the next missile, and the realization dawned on him that for the first time since the catastrophic Battle of Bloodmoon, he actually felt alive.
’One down, three to go. This’ll be fun.’- OOC:
- Word Count: 2000 exact.
AAR: Sam Dunn, as part of his post-battle therapy, is directed by the wing's psychologist to put his energy from moping into something more useful, like learning a skill. Strapped into a simulator cockpit under the watchful supervision of a medic, Sam is able to unwind a little, and discovers something surprising about bombing.
It is, to him, every bit as thrilling as fighter-on-fighter combat!
