VENA Space Station PLF
CappadociusSimulator Bay Besh, Interceptor Pod 7
One day before the second battle of the Sollamens.
Taltos grinned as he pulled on his helmet and climbed into the TIE simulator. With the bulk of his Naval Academy training behind him he'd found himself with a few days of spare time before the scheduled graduation ceremony, most of the trainees had gone on leave to visit family or to enjoy civilian life one last time before a potentially long tour of duty; but the Duros former spacer had stayed aboard in the barracks.
A few days with unlimited access to military-grade simulators suited him just fine.
He'd seen the trench from above in the shuttle from Abrae, and heard the other pilots mentioning it, but seeing it as it flashed into life in front of him was different.
Its walls were deep overhangs in places, horizontal fissures as well as vertical were visible down its length. Hotshot pilots had long made a reputation of taking dangerous canyons as a challenge, and this absolute
beauty was one of the most thrilling Taltos had seen. He wondered how many young pilots had lost their lives taking 'training flights' into the canyon before it had been programmed on the simulator pods.
The simulation was a classic scenario: Terrain-hugging flight, a little incidental SEAD, followed by the destruction of a hardened target. Simple enough mission parameters, but he'd set the run to be anything but simple.
The pod he sat in was an exact facsimile of the cockpit of a TIE Interceptor, hardly a ground-attack craft, even with the Vast Empire's addition of shields and concussion missile launchers (modified in this simulation for more destructive Proton torpedoes).
Most pilots valued the Interceptor's speed, but with lightness comes frailty. Even with the modified TIE's deflector shielding, it would be a risky proposition going in with the throttle low enough to get a sure-fire targeting solution. In a bomber with the same modifications, you may not be able to shake an enemy space-superiority snub', but you could afford taking a few more hits if it meant landing your ordinance in just the right spot.
With no time think, he would just have to make himself coiled to strike and rely on instinct.
But first he had to get past the ground defenses. As he rounded the canyon's first bend, a pair of green turbolaser bolts flashed past his forward viewport and smashed into the ice beside him, showering fragments of ice across his flight path. He pulled up to avoid the avalanche, still hugging the canyon's right wall, and was greeted by more turbolaser fire.
He banked down and left hard, presenting a slim forward profile to the simulated gunner. Angling in for a primary weapon attack could make a pilot vulnerable, but he could rely on the small hitbox of the Interceptor and the surprising vector of his approach. The gunner would still be leading his fast-moving fighter, not aiming directly at it. By the time the slow-traversing defense turret had a shot lined up, it was too late.
The turbolaser turret blossomed into flame as its frontal armor crumpled under repeated blasts, and Taltos pulled away from the looming canyon wall, back on course towards his target.
Suddenly the air in front of his fighter was filled with furious black smoke and an alarm began whistling in Taltos' helmet as his shields dropped precipitously.
He reacted only a moment from too late, inverting the fighter and dropping out of the cloud of flack boiling in his flight path. He twisted back right-side-up and saw the source of the fire ahead. A pair of squat four-legged AT-AA walkers were positioned on the canyon floor ahead of him, wide box turrets on top of them firing high-velocity magnetically accelerated flack rounds into the sky. The small, aerodynamic canisters lacked the direct energy delivery of a blaster bolt, but the clouds of abrasive, hypersonic microparticle flack they released upon detonation would leech a fighter's shields and drop them out of the sky if they couldn't avoid it.
He relied on his repulsorlifts to keep him a safe distance off deck and twisted a ribbon-shaped path across the canyon floor towards the two walkers. Flack filled the thin air above him and rained down on his shields, but the turrets could not depress far enough to land shots near him, and at a modest distance the strain on his shields was low enough that they began regenerating.
Weighing his options, Taltos reluctantly conceded that exposing himself to make an attack run on the walkers would only jeopardize his chances of making it to the primary target. Even if he made it through the flack, with an Interceptor's limited torpedo magazine he couldn't risk a missed shot now, and he knew the walker's armor would be too strong for blasters.
He knew that a bomber, with its larger space for ordinance and an upgraded shield generator might have been able to engage both targets without putting the mission in jeopardy; but Taltos was trained to be an Interceptor pilot, and he felt it important to learn how to make the most of the tools at his disposal.
He flew past the walkers at full throttle, their blocky silhouettes blurred by the speed. Shield power dropped once again as a few flack canisters detonated directly against his shields, but then he was past. He hugged the ground until around another sharp bend in the canyon forced him to rise – a prudent move anyway; little would be more important than a good assessment of the target's defenses.
He saw it ahead, on the other end of a nearly three-kilometer iced-over tunnel. The target was a squat grey durasteel bunker, the standardized and prefabricated design dropped on countless backwater worlds to enforce the Empire's sovereignty; now mostly the dens of warlords and opportunists across the outer rim, on worlds too destitute and unimportant for the Imperial successor factions to fight over.
The bunker was surrounded by earthen ramparts and fortifications, providing partial cover to an impressive network of turrets in clusters across the canyon floor and in ledges dug into the towering ice walls.
Taltos jammed the accelerator full ahead – well aware that each second he accelerated cost him precious time to assume the precise angle at which his proton torpedoes must strike the bunker to ensure target destruction. His twin hearts pulsed in his chest as the world seemed to pass by almost lazily, the defensive blaster bolts streaming toward him a surreal display of light and color.
With its wide side panels, the TIE series had compromised lateral turning in-atmosphere – a fact that had been drilled into the cadet's heads by their third day at VENA – so instead of using the rudder Taltos relied on the nimble fighter's high roll rate. He spun the fighter onto it's side and rolled, presenting as unpredictable and fast-moving a target as possible.
To ensure a hit, he would have to fire at the bunker from thirty degrees above ground LoS, firing less than eight hundred meters from the target to prevent enemy point defense from catching the torpedo.
He pulled the throttle back to retro-thrust and pushed the nose down – 1400 meters to target, he switched to secondary weapons systems.
He ignored the shield warning as enemy AA fire found its mark, watching only the range marker and the bunker growing in his viewport. The distance passed in a mere instant, although it seemed like the longest moment of the young pilot's life.
He squeezed the firing stud and pulled up as two missiles streaked ahead, leaving a thin trail of exhaust. Not even staying to watch the fireworks and mindful of the enemy fire still stippling his rear shields he continued to climb out of the trench, ending the simulation.
Blackness overtook the forward viewport, soon interrupted by Aurebesh lettering in bright red;
Simulation Failed
Target destruction incomplete.
He swore gently to himself and leaned back. Time to try again.
- OOC:
- Word Count: 1346
Taltos attempts a difficult sim run on a hardened bunker. He succumbs to the Interceptor's tempting speed and fails to hit the sweet spot with his Proton Torpedoes, but intends to spend the as long as needed retrying until he succeeds.
