"You're going to set a new record," the Academy training officer said to her the moment the door to her cell clicked and slid open.

"What can I say?" Delia replied, as she sat on the cot along the far wall,"I'm an overachiever."

"The most brig time in my first week as a flight cadet isn't an achievement I'd want my permanent record, " the training officer rebuked, Delia "mmhm"ing a reply, resuming her count of the rivets in the ceiling.

"However," he added," as Chief Stewar did start the altercation, that makes your assaulting him self-defense, meaning you won't go to prison."

"At least," he said," for now."

"Oh, darn," Delia replied,"and I was so looking forward to Blackrock."

"Mhm," the training officer said, adding,"get back to your quarters and get some sleep. You start BFM training in the morning."

Without a word, Delia slipped past the Academy training officer, walking out of the Naval Prison Complex, telling the guards on the way,"don't give out my room while I'm away." 

-----------------------
[-=Nazgul Squadron=-]

[-=Phoenix Wing=-]

FM/SCRW Delia "Evil Clown" Cael/Nazgul 3-2/Phoenix Wing/mSSD Atrus/1VENF/VEN/VE/(=*A*=)[SoA]

"So tell the judge I'm ready for the vases.
I'll dance in their faces when the guitar sounds.
Won't be long, I won't be gone.
Been leaning towards the shadows all along.

She awoke in a cold sweat, throwing the covers off her bed, walking quickly out of the barracks into the Academy compound, breaking into a run towards...nowhere in particular, as long as it was out.

The naval troopers guarding the perimeter of the dome looked at her strangely as she ran underneath the bright floodlights of night cycle, the poisonous clouds of Abrae's atmosphere swirling just over the dome, Delia tasting her sweat as it ran down her face.

Her legs stopped hurting after a few klicks, Delia running past the main Academy campus, towards an expirimental facility surrounded by a force field, barbed-wire and a phalanx of stormtroopers, all these precautions marking this area as the place where work on the droid TIE fighter project was continuing apace.

Delia turning away from that, finding herself heading towards Field L, Venom Squadron's Interceptors parked in a neat rank along the left-side of the neatly-manicured and maintained field, the grey monolith of the field's control tower jutting out at the extreme end of the flight line.

There were tech crews hard at work on the twelve captured Rebel A-Wings Chief Stewar had shown them earlier, Delia ignoring them, trotting up to the Interceptor assigned to her, clambering over the top and dropping into the cockpit through the open hatch, her hands going to the control yoke, fingers wrapping around it like they were born to it.

She wasn't suited up, so she couldn't take off, but Delia did a systems check anyway, spaceframe, reactor, twin-ion engines, shields, weapons, all--

Wait a mimute, she thought, noticing the weapons system's master arm switch was still locked in safe mode, even after she'd flipped it to hot, Delia taking the toolkit she'd stuffed behind the seat, opening up the control yoke, checking the circuitry and wiring, almost immediately finding the problem.

A simple matter of resplicing severed wires leading from the master arm switch to the weapons systems, and she was able to go weapons hot like she was supposed to be able to, Delia switching the master arm switch back to safe and powering the fighter down, climbing out of the cockpit, and, without anyone noticing her, she ran back towards the barracks.
 
-----------------------
[-=Nazgul Squadron=-]

[-=Phoenix Wing=-]

FM/SCRW Delia "Evil Clown" Cael/Nazgul 3-2/Phoenix Wing/mSSD Atrus/1VENF/VEN/VE/(=*A*=)[SoA]

"So tell the judge I'm ready for the vases.
I'll dance in their faces when the guitar sounds.
Won't be long, I won't be gone.
Been leaning towards the shadows all along.

(OOC: Well written thus far- keep up the excellent writing, Eve.  And I bet that that safe mode was on for a reason?)
 
-----------------------
*Flash Was Here...*

WC|TO/CMD Shazam/Phoenix 1-1/Phoenix Wing/mSSD Atrus/1VENF/VEN (=A=) (=*SA*=) (=MA=) (=*FOCE*=) [CBV*] [LoM] [LSM] [MC2] [VC:S] [SV*] [DSM] {Platinum Writing Medal}

Phoenix Wing Commander and Training Officer

"Everything's ready," Dav Stewar said to the hologram, the hologram nodding his head in reply.

"I will inform him then," he then said, adding,"remember, succeed or fail, you are on your own."

"We will see you," Stewar reassured him,"after we succeed. For the New Order."

"For," the holoprojection intoned,"the New Order."

"Brandei out," he concluded, before signing off.

The servant of the true Empire turned to the eleven other instructors.

"The trainees should pose no difficulty," he said,"especially after the modifications we made to their weapons systems. We lure them out to the opposite side of Tague, so close to its current sheet as to disrupt Abrae's sensors, destroy the cadets in what will appear to be an unfortunate accident, then jump for Tadath first, then for our carrier vessel at the edge of the Rhegant system to refuel and rearm, before assaulting the capital at Loltaith. "

He paused, focussing bleary eyes on his fellow soldiers, before adding:

"We hit VE Army HQ first, cause as much mayhem as possible, then run like hell once we burn up all our missiles. Same drill for Lolitath, we come in fast and low, smash the High Council chambers and jump for lightspeed for our carrier where we'll rejoin the rest of our comrades."

"The treasonous skifters will never know what hit 'em," Petty Officer 2C Trasi Connel remarked. "They'll blame the Rebels and devote their energies to retaliation against them, and we can scrape up what's left of this so-called Vast Empire once the Rebellion grinds them underfoot."

"Precisely," Stewar replied.

"To your fighters," he then said, most of the other instructors filing past him, Connel stopping to talk with his old comrade in arms a few moments.

"What about her?" he asked.

"What about her?" Stewar asked, his lip curling in a sneer.

"I assumed--" Connel started to say, the other man cutting him off.

"I would've loved to repay her in the way she deserved, Tras. However, what I want, and what the New Order demands of all of us are two different things."

"Always," he said,"remember which comes first."   









 
-----------------------
[-=Nazgul Squadron=-]

[-=Phoenix Wing=-]

FM/SCRW Delia "Evil Clown" Cael/Nazgul 3-2/Phoenix Wing/mSSD Atrus/1VENF/VEN/VE/(=*A*=)[SoA]

"So tell the judge I'm ready for the vases.
I'll dance in their faces when the guitar sounds.
Won't be long, I won't be gone.
Been leaning towards the shadows all along.

"Almost," Stewar said, watching that little frag lead the others to the slaughter in three perfect ladders, the A-Wing he was flying blacked down and drifting in orbit around Tague, occasional firings of the maneuvering thrusters keeping the captured Rebel fighter from falling into the atmosphere.

He had to hand it to the Rebel scum...this was a beautiful little ship, almost perfect as a fighter, far superior to the TIE Interceptors this so-called Vast Empire flew.

Perhaps Thrawn would allow him to keep this fighter once the mission had been successfully concluded.

"Venom Squadron now within optimum weapons range," Connel reported from his vantage point directly opposite Tague.

"All ships," Stewar said into comms,"power up engines, weapons and jammers, attack just as we rehearsed it, go!"

The twelve A-Wings swooped down on the unsuspecting and outclassed cadets, cutting off their escape, twenty-four blaster cannon firing in quick succession to take out TIE fighters before they could even think to react.

"Oh," he said with a chuckle over Venom Squadron's frequency,"did I forget? This is a live-fire exercise."

To his pilots, he growled,"finish them quickly, so we can complete our mission!"
____________________________________________________________

"Good," Delia whispered, switching her weapons to live fire, trying not to let the panic she was feeling creep into her voice.

"Good," she repeated, getting ready to volley a concussion missile into one of the A-Wings converging on...fierfek, the five ships left....

She launched the missile dumbfire--with this many A-Wings, she was bound to hit one of them--following it up with a volley of laserfire, as she screamed for her people to form up on her and hang on at the same time she shunted power away from the twin ion engines to the shields. 

It was their only hope, staying together, at least until they could even the odds a little, assuming they survived long enough for that to--

Her fighter juddered, the control yoke almost flying out of her hands, twoA-Wings going up as a result of the concussion missiles slamming into one of them.

"Venom Leader to any Imperial ship, please respond," Delia said over comms, knowing the chances of this escaping both the A-Wings' jamming and the effects of the gas giant's own current sheet were somewhat less than optimal.

"Venom Leader," she said, her five ships falling upon an A-Wing as one ship, "to any Imperial ship or base, am under attack by rogue Imperial elements, and I am declaring emergency code zero at this time."

The A-Wing banked, three more joining it, all four enemy fighters rocking the Interceptors' shields, as they closed, five sets of quad-linked lasers punching through their weak shielding, the cadets then flying into their burning wreckage.

Delia shouting "turn around and take the others out on my mark!" at the same time she manipulated her Interceptor's ion stream to quickly whip her ship around.
____________________________________________________________

"I thought you'd disabled their weapons!" Stewar screamed over comms, Connel whining in reply,"I did disable their weapons, I personally--"

"Forget it!" Stewar snapped, the five surviving Interceptors barrelling out of the burning wreckage of his comrades, hurtling themselves towards the six remaining A-Wings.

"Take them out!" he growled. "Use missiles if you--Emperor's black bones!"

The five Interceptors slid first to the left, then the right, lobbing a total of ten concussion missiles which caused Stewar and his fellow pilots to break in every direction at once, Stewar cursing as missiles found and removed two of his men from the sky.

Even odds.

This wasn't possible, these were cadets, she was nothing but a miserable, insubordinate little kriff, not even close to being the equal of a veteran pilot of the true Empire.

Yet, here she was, coming at him with her wingman in tow, Stewar launching one of the missiles he'd intended for Tadath at them, forcing them to break formation, the veteran Imperial pilot then rolling with that gods-damned frag, pumping blaster bolts into her forward shields.

"We've got to get the frag out of here!" Connel shouted over comms.

"Not without--" Stewar started to say, Connel directing his attention to the A-Wing's scanners.

"Emperor's black bones," he whispered, twelve TIE Aggressors reverting to realspace directly behind him.

A Pursuit-class light cruiser, an Interdictor-class cruiser and twelve TIE Interceptors directly behind them.

"Attention hostile craft," the voice of Commander Shazam said over comms,"you will stand down."

"Now."
________________________________________________________

"For the New Order!" that alcoholic kriff screamed, charging at her and her wingman full throttle, his A-Wing banking sharply, blasters punching through her wingman's shields, the pilot growling what were doubtlessly curses in Wookiee, as his ship's port wing disintegrated.

"Destroy them!" Stewar shouted, running past her, Delia whipping her ship around, taking it to the firewall, driving laser bolts into the A-Wing's near-failing rear shields with unrestrained fury, Stewar cutting in the captured Rebel fighter's boosters in an attempt to outrun her and the other Imperial fighters.

Glancing at her rear scanners, she noticed his three comrades had not been as fortunate, one of them being reeled in deadstick by the light cruiser, the other two scattered halfway across the system by laser volleys on all sides.

The Wookie was also being reeled in by the light cruiser, his life signs strong and stable.

There was that at least.

The missile warning tone returned her attention to the view from her front windscreen, Stewar's A-Wing launching a pair of concussion missiles at her, Delia picking them off with a pair of laser bolts, the other two lancing through the other fighter's port ion engine, exploding it into trillions of bits of hot junk.

"You weren't supposed to win!" Stewar screamed in frustration over comms, as he launched a second pair of missiles.

"And this wasn't supposed to be a live-fire exercise," Delia replied tautly, shooting down the second pair of missiles, vectoring a final volley into the A-Wing itself.

Smiling slightly, as she watched it dissolve in a brilliant flash of hot, white light.

"Things just work out that way sometimes," she whispered sadly to herself, her mind on all those she'd led to their deaths.


-----------------------
[-=Nazgul Squadron=-]

[-=Phoenix Wing=-]

FM/SCRW Delia "Evil Clown" Cael/Nazgul 3-2/Phoenix Wing/mSSD Atrus/1VENF/VEN/VE/(=*A*=)[SoA]

"So tell the judge I'm ready for the vases.
I'll dance in their faces when the guitar sounds.
Won't be long, I won't be gone.
Been leaning towards the shadows all along.