The Gathering Storm

[Greybok]

The flight simulators for the C-55B M-wing starfighters looked like sawed off versions of the aforementioned starfighter's cockpits, which Greybok was already familiar with due to their exact resemblance to the Malla-class starfighter. Sitting in one was slightly less comfortable for him over its predecessor just because the newer model was better suited to humans, but Greybok was able to accomodate. The controls were in much the same place, with some new additions, making it easy to find his way around.

"Thank you both for coming," the Burnin Konn representative said. "Burnin Konn Shipwrights is honored to have such distinguished starfighter pilots test our latest product." She then bowed in Alys's direction. "And congratulations to you on your recent promotion. Two commanders. This is a wonderful opportunity." She hit a switch to give power to the simulators. "I have already uploaded the simulation packages. This will be a dogfight between the two of you. We have coded in your astromech droids based on your specifications and descriptions of them, so this will be as close to a real flight as we can possibly make it." The woman spread her hands wide. "Good luck to the both of you. We look forward to examining the results."

The Wookiee pilot lowered strapped himself in and engaged the transparisteel canopy, which began to close over him, initiating the simulation. Once the cockpit hatch was sealed, the display kicked in and the simulator began to rock. Suddenly, it was as though he was in hyperspace. There was a pale white tunnel all around him, and he was surprised at the realism; this simulator was better than the ones that he had trained on as a pilot.

He checked everything in his cockpit. The representative had been right. A simulated version of BE-ET was in the astromech socket behind the cockpit, which meant he already felt at home in the simulated starfighter. The droid whistled and its Binary was translated into Basic on Greybok's fighter's main display. We're coming out of hyperspace. Sure enough, the craft lurched and the white tunnel dissolved into a thousand pinpricks of light as the craft reverted to realspace. There was a pale moon orbiting a massive gas giant on his port side, and a small debris field a short distance away on his starboard side; otherwise, there was nothing interesting to see.

Greybok took the opportunity to flip the switch of his M-wing's scanners into active mode. The main display used muted greens to map the space around him. When Alysanne appeared, he wanted to be able to see her before she saw him. Already excitement was rising in him. This was going to be good. @Wit

 

[Alysanne Drast]

Slipping into the simulator's cockpit, Alys was impressed by the fact that they had modified the simulators so that both Alys and Grey felt comfortable in their respective cockpits. Trying to stuff him into a cockpit designed for a human, or her into one meant for a wookiee would have immediately had a great impact on their performance, and in reality neither of them would have flown ships like that. Not unless there was no other choice. It was a simple thing, but it ensured that the results of this simulation were accurate, or about as accurate as a simulation could be.

Once she had strapped herself in and the cockpit hatch had sealed, the simulation kicked in, the familiar control panels of the Mala-class fighters Star Squadron had grown familiar with coming to life in front of her. These M-wings were based on the Wookiee fighters after all, and the familiarity put her at ease by the time the astromech-droid program in her simulator indicated imminent exit from hyperspace, Alys was feeling about as comfortable as she could in the "ship".

As she dropped out of hyperspace, her eyes immediately went to the scanners, trying to spot Grey. "Try to get a lock on Grey and find me a vector to get to him." If the point of this exercise was to test the ship's capabilities then the best way as to engage in some good old dogfighting. And for that she needed to find Grey. As the droid tweeted having sensed something that could be nothing but another fighter, she swung the ship around along the vector the droid had provided and punched the ship's accelerator. They were still quite some distance apart, so she was able to open the ship's engines right up and test it's speed and maneuverability. Performing a few spins as the ship shot towards Grey, she smiled at the responsiveness. She had been worried that adding so much onto the Mala, and the weight that went with it, would have an effect on the way the ship flew, but the way the ship flew put all her worries to rest.

The droid beeped again as she was getting close to combat range. She opened up the comms and began broadcasting on all channels. "Unknown vessel, you have shed fur on one couch too many, and for your crimes I must bring you in. Stand down, or prepare to engage!" She did little to stop the excitement in her voice, since the day she had met Grey she had known he was an amazing pilot, and even before joining Star Squadron she had been honing her skills, waiting for an opportunity to pit herself against him. Now that the moment had arrived she was going to have as much fun with it as she could.

@Malon

 

[Greybok]

The sensors on Greybok's ship had already picked up Alys and he was similarly setting into the routine of preparing for combat. He barked a command in Shyriiwook instructing BE-ET to tag Alys as "Target One." As he did so, he pushed the shield power full to front and brought up his laser targeting program on his ship's main display. Sure enough, BE-ET had complied and Alys's vessel was tagged accordingly. With his left hand, he twisted and adjusted the sighting calibration knob on the stick until he had Alys's starfighter.

The prep-work done, he punched the throttle pedal and accelerated to attack speeds. Unlike Alys, he didn't bother to broadcast a warning over the comm unit. Perhaps it was the smuggler in him that didn't like playing fair, or perhaps he was trying to teach her a lesson about pilots who didn't play fair. Maybe it was both. Either way, he instead opted to settle his hand on the stick and let his thumb hover over the firing button. At two klicks, the heads-up display painted a yellow box around Alys' M-wing. Then the box went green as her fighter's image locked into the HUD's targeting cross.

BE-ET's shrills filled the cockpit and that was the last signal he was waiting for; he hit the trigger button sending three bursts of laser bolts at Alys's fighter. Without waiting to see if his bolts hit their mark, he would tug the stick to his left and roll the ship to port, out of the trajectory of Alys's fighter, level out, and fly in an arc that would take him in a loop around her ship's position until it came up directly behind where her ship had just been.

If successful, this evasive maneuver would make it hard for her to return fire and—granted she was able to deal with the first volley of laser fire—she would now have to deal with a fighter on her stern rather than flying straight at her. @Wit

 

[Alysanne Drast]

Not getting any response, Alys grinned as the clicks vanished between them, realizing that Grey's silence probably meant that she was taking this just as seriously as her. That was good, she wanted to face everything he had to throw at her. As the they began to get close, where Grey diverted power to his shields, Alys instructed her droid to divert all power to the thrusters, shooting away with as much speed as she could. She didn't have his experience, but she did have one thing going for her, the Force. She was hoping to rely on that to give her an edge in the fight.

Even as Grey got a lock on her, she was lining up her own target reticle onto him, but not for his M-wing, but a little below him. A quarter click or so. And she fired off not her lasers, but a torpedo. Even as the torpedo flew from her ship, she diverted power to her forward shields, the sudden drop in power to the engines slowing her down. But with the shields now up, she ignored the shots coming towards her from and instead fired off shots of her own, at Grey's M-wing and above, hoping to force him to go down, into the path of the torpedo she had fired.

By then the shots from Grey would slam into her shields, each shot landing as the shields started weakening and dropped altogether. By the time the last shot came through her shields had failed, and though she tried to use the Force to improve her reflexes to twist away at the last moment, without any prior practice of using the Force like that the shot slammed into the side of her fuselage, alarms beginning to blare within the simulator as she recovered as best as she could and turned towards her left to drift away from Grey and put more distance between herself and the Wookiee if he came towards her from the stern of her ship.

@Malon

 

[Greybok]

A missile. A smart tactic. Fortunately, the deflector shields on an M-wing could protect the fighter from energy and kinetic weapons. The shield materialized as a bubble approximately twenty meters in front of the M-wing and soaked up the damage from the missile, which exploded harmlessly against it. In fact, had Alys used the entire payload of her starfighter in that moment, Greybok would have been fine, though his shields would have been destroyed. As it stood, his shields had only lost about a third of their power.

The rest of his plan went through smoothly and he ended up on the girl's stern. Once again, he punched the accelerator and accelerated to attack speed. As he did, he switched his weapons over to missiles. He didn't know how much Alys knew about shields and their logistics, but, as a seasoned pilots, he knew that a deflector shield consisted of both ray shields and particle shields; particle shields were forced to come down to allow for a missile to fire and took time to recharge. During that time, Alys would be venerable to a missile attack of her own.

Once again, his main display painted a yellow box around her fighter; but, this time, that box went red when her fighter locked into the HUD's cross. He didn't hesitate to squeeze the trigger, releasing a missile towards Alys's stern. He then howled at BE-ET to divert engine power to recharging his shields. The move would decelerate him a bit, but would cut the time needed for his particle shields to recover. Besides, from his position behind her, he would see any maneuver she tried to pull long before it became a danger to him. He just needed to be patient. He was eager to see how the girl acted under pressure. @Wit

 

[Alysanne Drast]

Alys let out a curse she had learnt from the gungans as she saw Grey's shields absorb the impact of the missile's explosion. She had no ides what it meant, but she liked the sound of it, it seemed to very appropriately convey the frustration she was feeling. With Grey not on her back, she had to think quickly to avoid losing this fight way sooner than she would like. So as she saw Grey cutting down the distance on her, she waited till he was almost too close and the warning systems were blaring in an almost constant screech inside her cockpit before taking action.

Aware on some level that she hadn't entirely thought this through, she yanked the accelerator yolk back, as far as it would go. All at once the ship slowed down, the inertial compensators inside the cockpit simulating the forces she would have felt if she had tried the trick in a real fight, though they did tone it down to prevent her from seriously injuring herself. Even so, her body slammer forward, and her hand slipped free of the acceleration yoke and she somehow managed to slam her own fist into her nose.

But even as she was bleeding all over the insides of the simulator, she put aside the thought that she might have set some sort of record by getting injured inside a simulator, she stayed focused on Grey. If her ploy worked and he did indeed shoot past her, she would punch her accelerator ahead once more, brining her reticles onto him as soon as she could and firing once more. This time, having learnt from her last attack, she would fire both her remaining torpedoes at him.

Her heart pounding away in excitement, she waited, hoping that her ploy worked. It better, she had just broken her nose to pull it off.

@Malon