Dining on ashes (Complete)

[Tannis V'larr]

Imperial Academy of Carida, 1 BBY

Ensign Tannis V'larr, adjunct flight instructor, crossed to the first of four training simulators with savage urgency in his long stride. Even before the pod, the same shape and size as an eyeball cockpit, hissed and settled back into its hydraulic carriage, the Sikarran halfbreed hammered the override code into the control panel. The exit hatch in the side of the simulator slid free from its cowl, pouring acrid smoke into the test hangar.

A slight figure in a trainee's flight suit spilled out from the still-sparking simulator pod and onto the gangway, still unsteady on her feet after the exceedingly convincing experience of spinning out and breaking up in a planet's upper atmosphere at a suicidally high speed.

Tannis did not even allow the pilot to remove her flight helmet before he said, in a sharp voice loud enough for her assembled squadmates to hear, "Cadet Inirial. You were the flight leader for this exercise. How would you critique your performance?"

[Carré Inirial]

Slender hands shook as she disconnected the helmet and tore it away from her head. Long sable curls spilled free as one hand tightened into a fist and the other sported a white-knuckled grip on her helmet. Superior or not, she fixed Tannis with an emerald glare that had withered lesser men.

"Acceptable, given the hellacious conditions you set for the mission and then altered to suit your whims...sir." Carré snapped in response, ignoring the looks and murmurs from the others. While she'd push any button she could, she'd never come so close to pure insubordination before.

As such, she danced a little closer to it, when her mouth ran off without the clearance of her mind. "I counted two instances where my control yoke was compromised in the midst of maneuvers where no reason for it was possible, and another where a direct hit I was certain I'd avoided suddenly flashed across my sensors and took my shields down by nearly seventy percent!"

Pure disgust and frustration danced across her features as she pitched her helmet off to the side and resisted the urge to hit him.

Barely.

[Tannis V'larr]

"Combat in flight is unpredictable. An intimate familiarity with the capabilities of both your spacecraft and your wingmates is essential for dealing with unforeseen challenges. However, if you consider the loss of all pilots the result of an 'acceptable' performance, then clearly you are ready for your commission at this very moment."

He matched Carré's fury with implacable calm. Smoke still curled out of the simulator behind the young pilot.

"Cadet Ruyen, what was Cadet Inirial's first mistake?"

Carré's wingman, a lanky, blond Chandrilan, stood rigid with his mouth partway open, trying to decide whose wrath was more risky to provoke. "Uh... she destroyed the flight simulator, sir."

"That was her last mistake," Tannis replied, still skewering the Alderaanian girl with his pale yellow eyes. "Cadet Rhys?"

One of the senior cadets, Rhys wisely avoided eye contact with either Tannis or the accused. "She engaged the enemy, sir."

Tannis lowered his head in what from any other species could have been called a leer. "Precisely."

[Carré Inirial]

A hand lifted to pinch the bridge of her nose for a moment, trying to bring some semblance of coherency back to her viciously racing thoughts. A sharp bite to her lower lip produced a trickle of blood, but it served its purpose. It quelled the laughter that threatened to spill out, and sharpened her senses.

She was still livid, however, at least Carré felt like she could think again.

Ruyen's stammered comment made her tilt her head back towards her sim, emerald eyes flicking over the cracked struts, the charring stretched across the underbelly, and the smoke that still billowed out from the interior. So much for the 'indestructable' technology that could take anything thrown at it.

Rhys' quiet answer almost escaped her notice, but the girl's avoidance of her gaze answered more than one lingering question she'd had about her since the day she'd arrived. Carré filed away the observation to mull over at a later time, before turning her attention back to Tannis.


Damnable bastard had to be good-looking too, didn't he.

You are formally engaged.

I'm aware of that...hard to forget when my father reminds me of it every time I call home.

And yet you're attracted to the man who's obviously got a hell of a grudge against you?

Never said I made much sense.

She drew herself up and crossed her arms over her chest, meeting his glare with one of her own in spite of the obvious difference in their height. Or was it a leer...no, definitely a glare. He wouldn't dare be so obvious with a leer.

"Your pre-flight instructions did not contain explicit instructions to not engage the enemy. At the completion of the initial task, I thought it prudent to do so as you did not interrupt to critique our performance as is your usual way." she replied, venom still lacing her tone.

[Tannis V'larr]

"And you did so by pursuing a pair of Z-95 Headhunters into a debris field laced with Selenite-71, a radioactive isotope notorious for reflecting the sensor beams of most small spacecraft, including the TIE/ln and its variants," Tannis replied. "You followed the enemy into a trap. You were destroyed not by an enemy fighter but by an ion cannon mounted on a modified CR90 corvette, one of three small capital ships concealed in the debris."

The Sikarran halfbreed keyed a command into a control panel, pulling up a tactical readout of the mission site onto the large vidscreen above the simulator pods. Red outlines marked the position of all hostile units in the field. There were a lot of them.

"Had you survived the corvette's broadside and escaped the debris field, there was an entire squadron of Helix-class light interceptors operating on remotely transmitted targeting data prepared to overtake you. As it is, you did not even survive long enough to transmit your flight records to an Imperial relay station before meeting your demise. A pirate operation of no insignificance remains free to pillage our supply routes at their convenience."

[Carré Inirial]

The girl spun on the heel of her boot, the movement severely precise. She stalked back to her ruined sim and leaned inside, plucking out a half-melted flimsi. Turning once more, she returned to her previous position.

Rather, she was a half-step closer than she had been.

Holding the flimsi up in the bloody fingers of her left hand, its protective glove half melted away. Her voice, when it emerged, had acheived a new level of flat and her Alderaanian accent was even more pronounced than usual. "You are mistaken, Ensign. The moment it began to look grim, I set my sensor array and flight data on auto-transmit. They were transmitting up until the moment my TIE exploded, and according to this read-out, just enough data made it through to be of use to the cruiser that we dropped from."

Emerald eyes flicked up to the holoscreen briefly, before narrowing and returning to Tannis' face. The bastard had done this to her purpose. This humiliation had been planned out. As her free hand curled into a fist, she wondered distantly who she'd pissed off this time.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis took the film in his hands and perused the readout. "You may be correct. Unfortunately, the damage you dealt to the simulator rendered the control room incapable of confirming your transmission. In any case, the loss of your ship and your wingmates is more than enough to earn a failing grade for the exercise."

Before she could voice any protest, he turned toward the rest of the assembled training squadron. "None of you," he said, his voice like iron, "is good enough to ignore the rudimentary protocols of threat assessment and response. An unknown threat is a deadly threat. The universe is under no obligation to provide you with a fair fight, let alone to satisfy your personal thirst for glory. Each of you will write a full mission report on Gamma Flight's telemetry. You will detail all the tactical and procedural errors made by its pilots and its leader, and you will suggest alternative actions which may have produced a more favorable outcome. This report is due in two days' time. You are dismissed."

Tannis turned on a bootheel and walked at a leisurely pace toward the east exit of the training hangar.

[Carré Inirial]

Ruyen and Rhys both backed away when she met their gaze, and the others were doing their level best to melt into the background, unnoticed. Before she realized she was even moving, she'd already crossed the room. Bloody fingers lifted and tapped Tannis' shoulder with a deceptively delicate touch.

You really shouldn-

He turned with an infuriating slowness, his expression a cross between a smirk and and a patronizing smile. Carré pause, emerald eyes tracing the line of his jaw with a heated glance that could have been interpreted in a myriad of ways.

It only lasted a moment, though.

Before her fist met the spot her eyes had lingered on.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis rocked backward with the blow, just enough to avoid taking the full force of Carré's pointed fist. He moved quickly, pulling Carré's arm into a joint lock and bearing her down hard to the hangar floor.

He pinned the squirming cadet there on the deck with her arm folded painfully behind her back. A pair of security guards came clattering toward the scuffle with their sidearms out. Tannis intercepted them with a fierce glare. "Return to your posts," he said.

"Sir, do you--"

"That's an order."

The guards shared an incredulous look, holstered their weapons, and slowly backed away from the scene. On the other side of the hangar, the gaggle of cadets edged closer. Tannis turned his wrath toward them.

"You do have other duties to attend to?"

There was a ragged chorus of "Yes sirs," and the herd thinned. When the last of them had gone, and Carré had given up on trying to wriggle out of his grasp, he released her and rose to his feet.

"Can I help you with something, Cadet?" he asked primly.

[Carré Inirial]

She took a few moments, when he let her loose, taking deep breaths and stretching out her arm. A graceful movement saw her push up from the floor and rise to her feet, gritting her teeth she pulled the ruined glove from her burned hand.

Finger by finger, she pulled it off and surveyed the damage, thankful her adrenaline was still holding off most of the pain.

By the time Carré looked up and met Tannis' gaze once more, she'd regained some measure of composure. She would not give him any further satisfaction in her out of control temper. For at least a few minutes, anyway, she mused.

"Why the Solis mission? And why today, when there are four fleet Admirals looking over the cadets? Is my public humiliation the Academy past-time?" she asked, tilting her head to one side, her voice audibly forced to a lighter tone.

[Tannis V'larr]

By now he had regained his ramrod posture, hands clasped behind his back, only a few misplaced hairs betraying that he had just been wrestling her to the floor.

"You do not have the luxury of choosing your battles in active duty. Why should you expect anything different from your training? If you cannot control the circumstances of the mission, you must rise to them. Or are you saying you are incapable of doing so?"

[Carré Inirial]

His response elicited a sigh and a gentle shake of her head. had she really expected any different? Certainly not. But there was always some measure of hope that somewhere, at some point, someone would grow a pair of balls and tell her the truth. Since she'd arrived at the Academy, it was as if she'd had a target painted on her.

Because of her father, her older brothers, her family's Royal status on Alderaan...Carré just couldn't catch an opportunity to prove herself.

There was a fair amount, she thought, that could have happened differently in the sim mission. If she'd just trusted her sensor array data, maybe-

-pain blasted through her senses as she hissed a string of curses under her breath, her hands beginning to shake as the adrenaline wore off. Great...just frakkin' great. Could this day get any worse?

"I am more than capable. Today was simply not my finest hour." Carré managed to say with a bit more vehemence than she likely should have. "Will there be anything else, sir? I'd like to have my hand tended to, with your permission."

[Tannis V'larr]

"There is still the matter of your striking a superior officer," Tannis replied. "Combined with your record of insubordinate behavior, I have sufficient grounds to bring you before a full tribunal."

He let the threat of expulsion hang in the air for a desperate moment to see how she weathered it.

"If you are capable of rising to the circumstances, then you must prove it. You will attend to your injuries, and then you will meet me back here at nineteen hundred hours. Do not be late. You are dismissed, Cadet."

[Carré Inirial]

Plump lips pressed together in a straight line as her shoulders tightened. Tannis had hit on perhaps the only thing that would get to her. Appearing before a tribunal would most certainly disappoint her father and her brothers....and that was the worst thing she could possibly think of. Their opinions meant everything to her.

Drawing herself up with precise movements, she saluted crisply. "Nineteen hundred hours, yes sir." Turning neatly on her heel, she took measured steps to the nearest exit and made a bee-line for the medcenter.

[Tannis V'larr]

At nineteen hundred, Tannis stood reviewing roster notes on a datapad in the middle of the training hangar. He looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps.

"Cadet Inirial. Good. We have little time to waste."

He was dressed in a flight suit with a pilot's helmet under his arm. He set the datapad on a work table and beckoned her in.

"You will be performing an exercise with me. Please suit up and take your position in pod three. Pod one is unavailable, for obvious reasons."

[Carré Inirial]

Flexing her newly healed fingers, she frowned at the slight tightness of the skin over her fingertips. She kept moving them as she walked back towards the hanger bay, pleased that she'd be on time.

And that it would be one less thing he could call her on.

Carré nodded her assent as he spoke and made quick work of changing into a flightsuit and grabbing up her helmet. She settled into the third pod, tossing a grin at the broken sim in spite of the drama had ensued. Her helmet slid on as the hatch closed and the simulator purred to life.

As the lights on her instruments flicked on, her comm crackled to life. Carré waited to hear Tannis' instructions as her fingers coursed lightly over the controls.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis's voice on the comm was cool and clinical.

"Since you are so eager for an opportunity to display your talents, Cadet, I have given you one. This simulation will be more challenging than any you have undertaken so far. I frankly do not expect you to succeed."

The forward viewer was still dark, but a set of ship's schematics appeared there - a variant of the TIE fighter with split dagger-shaped panels, sleek, contoured, and full of menace.

"You will be flying an advanced design called the TIE Interceptor. Perhaps you've heard of it?"

It was common knowledge by now at the academy that she owned one of the craft - her wealthy father had bought it for her in congratulation for her acceptance to the academy. Now Tannis would test her knowledge of its capabilities.

"I need not remind you that while it is significantly faster and more maneuverable than the standard TIE/ln, it is also unshielded," Tannis said. "When flying in pitched combat, there can be no room for errors. Your only objectives for this mission are to form on my wing and follow me. To succeed, you must push your craft to the limits of its capabilities. You must also trust me implicitly and follow my orders without hesitation. Do you understand?"

[Carré Inirial]

She permitted herself a small sigh of pleasure, fingers coursing over the controls as emerald eyes gazed over the schematics. This...this she could do. This is what she was meant to do, she mused.

Carré nodded as Tannis continued, too pleased to be in an Interceptor to argue with his assumption that she'd never survive.

"Perfectly understood. Broader mission parameters, sir?" she asked, doing her best to keep her voice cool and professional in spite of her giddiness.

[Tannis V'larr]

"Broader parameters?' Tannis replied. "Survive."

A crack of starlight appeared before them, and, with a heavy groan, a large pair of space doors began to grind open. Carre's fighter sat in an Imperial hangar bay with one other Interceptor beside her. And before them, not even masked by an air shield, was a vast fleet of ships, Rebel and Imperial, hundreds upon hundreds scattered in every direction, locked in unrelenting battle. Bursts of turbolaser fire latticed the battlefield in unpredictable lances of red and green, exploding engines bloomed like fireworks, and starfighters of every type imaginable bolted in all directions, tiny flies desperately avoiding being crushed between the giants.

An X-Wing hurtled past the open hangar bay and struck a spinning shard of molten hull plating. It tumbled off-course and beyond the frame of the doors, striking the hull of their mothership and setting the whole superstructure rumbling.

"Now."

Tannis's interceptor rocketed out of its clamps in a shimmering streak of ions and into the deadly melee outside.

[Carré Inirial]

There was nothing to say.

Carré punched the controls forward and rocketed after him. Once clear of the rumbling mothership, she slipped up behind him and slightly to his right hand side, the usual place for the wingman in a two ship formation.

Emerald eyes were wide as she flipped neatly onto her side with the blaring proximity alarm coming from her sensors. A barrage of laser fire slid by in a wide swath of blue, and it was all she could do to not peal away and go chasing after the Rebel craft.

But that wasn't her mission here. Sticking to Tannis' side was...as was not getting vaped.

[Tannis V'larr]

It was unnatural for space to be so crowded - capital ships fighting so close to one another their engines were flooded with each others' radioactive wash, hampered like men fighting waist-deep in mud, with no recourse but to continue carving into one another's hulls at incredibly close range. As they passed a Nebulon-B, Tannis lurched underneath its long, narrow neck to avoid a turbolaser barrage from a descending Carrack-class cruiser. The frigate split in two above them, and when the shower of shrapnel had cleared, Tannis glanced at his radar to confirm that Carré was still with him.

Ahead of them loomed the curving, cetacean hull of a Mon Calamari MC80 star cruiser, locked in a thundering duel with an Imperial-class Star Destroyer. The two behemoths pummeled one another with turbolasers and concussion warheads, filling the space between them with charred and splintered debris.

"Fall behind me!" Tannis ordered, and he angled his Interceptor on what looked for a moment like a collision course with the Mon Cal cruiser, but he leveled out at the last possible fraction to skim its molten hull, flying so close that it could not bring its antifighter turrets to bear. Green turbolaser fire from the ISD fell around them like rain.

A pair of new signals lit up Tannis's radar, and he gave Carré a clipped warning. "Bandits at six. Ready evasive action."

Two A-Wings descended on the Interceptors' position and opened fire, mindless of the cruiser below them.

[Firenne Khapst]

...........

[Carré Inirial]

The girl found herself hard-pressed to not giggle with absolute delight in those moments. In spite of the 'danger' the heart of the battle represented, she was still flying, tasked only with evading damage and sticking to Tannis' proverbial tail. Carré spun, twisted, dove, and climbed...as if this were little more than an aerial prowess demonstration.

Her movements, however, were not florid and overdone...she kept them precise and measured as she tried to keep her joy contained.

"Fall behind me!"

Carré complied with great alacrity, sliding almost sideways to do so as she avoided a sheared off foil as it hurtled by. The 'ship' protested the peculiar movement, to which she apologized and patted the edge of the intrument panel. "You're ok...I'll get you out of this in one piece, I promise." she murmurred faintly, eyes tracking Tannis' position both visually and with her sensors.

As he plunged toward the cruiser, her grin broadened and she pulled back on the controls to skim the surface scant seconds after he did.

"Bandits at six. Ready evasive action."

"Copy that. Taking evasive action..." she replied, her voice as bright as it was formal. Mindful of the anti-fighter turrets, she slid from the position directly behind Tannis' Interceptor and was rewarded as one of the A-wings shifted to follo her. Angling carefully over the next ridge of the Mon Cal's hull, her Interceptor was high enough to be targeted for the span of four seconds before she shot forward and down again, just under the barrage of laser fire headed her way. The A-wing behind her took the full brunt of it and exploded brilliantly.

[Tannis V'larr]

The other A-Wing was more cautious. He kept his distance from the MC80's AA guns and angled his pivoting blaster cannons to snipe at the two TIEs below.

As Tannis and Carré neared the cruiser's engines, they approached a vast network of radiator fins and pipes. Tannis fired into the mess of machinery, sending up an immense, boiling cloud of steam that engulfed both Interceptors.

The A-Wing slowed, unable to track his targets in the steam. When he saw the burst of green blaster fire knife out of the cloud like lightning, it was already too late for him - his fuselage cracked, and his oversize engine pods blasted off in separate directions, leaving only a trail of vapor and ionized metal.

Tannis and Carre burst out of the vapor cloud and into an open corridor through the center of the melee across which capital ships pummeled one another with their heavy weapons. At the end end of the corridor was a vast, white sphere that looked like a small moon - in fact, that's what it was, with a network of bunkers, landing platforms, turbolaser towers, missile launchers, and heavy ion batteries to equal the firepower of a dozen Star Destroyers, all broadcasting the IFF codes of the Rebel Alliance. A burning hulk of a Dreadnaught-class cruiser drifted into the surface of the planetoid and went up in a towering plume of fire.

"There is a network of service tunnels throughout the superstructure of that battlemoon," Tannis said. "They will provide us with the most direct route out of the field of combat. Aim for the aperture fifteen kilometers to the north of the equator."

As they approached, the battlemoon filled the sky with explosive charges and turbolaser blasts.

[Carré Inirial]

"I suppose if we come across some sort of power source and we accidentally destroy it that wouldn't be too far outside of mission parameters?"

Carré quipped, now very hard pressed and beginning to fail at keeping the sheer delight from her voice. A tiny bubble of laughter passed her lips as she effortlessly rolled her Interceptor to the left - narrowly avoiding a blast from one of the cruisers. Steady hands on the controls leveled the ship out and brought it back to its designated spot behind Tannis.

I can't wait to get out of here to tell Nyx and Tristan, both of whom will undoubtedly tell me I should never have hit him. At least, Nyx will lecture me, and Tristan will just sort of stare at her wistfully. I don't know why she doesn't see it...

Her thoughts rambled off on her as the rest of her mind concentrated on flying. Rather, concentrated on playing "Dodge The Pretty Colored Killer Lights" and not giving her instructor the satisfaction of watching her crash and burn. As the battlemoon loomed larger the closer they approached, Carré took note of the particular aperture Tannis had mentioned.

Moments later, in spite of the anti-fighter arrays, the two Interceptors easily slipped inside past the defenses. She frowned at the lack of any sort of defensive mechanisms on the inside and ordered Fiver to keep the sensors on full-out scan. Were this real and not a simulation, no one who took the time and effort to build such a thing would leave the service tunnels unprotected, would they? Certainly no one in the Empire would make such an oversight.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis switched on his forward lights as they plunged into the darkness of the tunnel. Its walls were jagged and unfinished, buttressed here and there by heavy durasteel braces at unpredictable angles. At these speeds there was no time for thought, for analysis, only for instinct and nerve. Deadly hazards flashed past them by the grace of centimeters; the proximity alarm was now more or less meaningless.

And then a crackling blue particle beam speared through the darkness, forcing Tannis to juke from one side of a crossbeam to the other. "Maintenance droids." They crawled over the interior surface of the tunnels like crabs, sending up showers of sparks as they drilled into the moon's pourous interior, occasionally turning to blast their cutting beams at the passing TIEs.

[Carré Inirial]

There was a joke to be made, she was sure of it, about tripping the light fantastic. The glittering blue cutting beams arced wildly as they passed each group of droids, her eyes drawn to the nearly animalistic formations they scurried in.

Shaking her head, Carré shoved her control yoke to the left, send her Interceptor spinning to avoid a veritable onslaught of sparks and cutting beams. Almost as quickly, she pulled it back to the right to keep Tannis in her sights as the tunnel forked.

Emerald eyes spared a quick glance towards the sensor panel that gave her a relative position within the battlemoon, and with a faint aww of disappointment, she noted that they were almost through to the other side. She hadn't had this much fun flying in ages.

Her gaze narrowed and her fingers tightened on the controls as the corridor narrowed, leaving the Interceptors with few centiments to spare on either side of them. Carré winced as she felt a chunk of exposed durasteel scrape along her right wing, flaying it open like a jagged blade through flesh. Her ship shuddered as half of her sensors went dark and her lights went completely, leaving her in the dark.

One last burst of speed saw them pull clear of the superstructure, and saw her TIE start to spin out of control in spite of her efforts.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis saw Carré's signal skew off-course in his targeting scope, and he slammed the rudder pedal to turn his fighter around and face her. She was in a deadly spin, her starboard radiator panel missing, the severed pylon sparking violently, her ion engines sputtering and adding to her rotational momentum. TIE pilots had a name for that - a death spiral. Even if the pilot stayed conscious, eventually the rotations grew too intense to counteract, and even a fraction of the TIE's maximum thrust would shear it to pieces.

So Tannis did what he would never have done in a real TIE.

He fired his engines in short, controlled bursts, just enough to slow himself and put his fighter on a collision course with hers. As they drew nearer, he put his own Interceptor into a lazy roll, twisted off-center, gently gave it some yaw, twisted the flightstick at the crucial moment -

There was an almighty crash and screech of twisting metal, and the starfield around them spun crazily. Tannis fired his landing thrusters, fighting the rotation, gradually bringing the streaking stars to a halt.

They came to a rest together. Tannis's fighter had speared Carré's, gripping her pylons in the notches of his own solar panels, twisting both craft beyond repair. They were locked together, their canopies less than a meter apart.

[Carré Inirial]

She didn't even realize the spinning had slowed and then stopped.

It took several moments for the ringing in her ears to fade, brought on by the screeching, rending metal. Her eyes were half-lidded against any further dizzying sensations as she pulled her helmet off and leaned her head back. Raven curls spilled across her shoulders as she tore her gloves off, pressed fingers to her temples, and tried to calm her still-racing heart.

Blinking, Carré finally opened her eyes completely and what little breath she'd managed to take in caught in her throat at the sight of Tannis' Interceptor entwined with hers in vicious intimacy. Emerald eyes widened at the sight, and for the first time in her life, she was utterly speechless.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis locked his controls and removed his own helmet so he could see her face to face. His was as cold and unflappable as ever.

"Carré," he said, the first time she could remember him using her first name, "why are you here?"

[Carré Inirial]

"Because there's nothing else I can even imagine myself doing. Nothing that I love more than flying."

Carré echoed softly, lifting a hand to push the curls from her cheek. There was no artifice or attitude evident for the moment. Just the truth.

[Tannis V'larr]

"Do you know how many cadets would reliably give some variation of that answer?" Tannis replied. "There are many who believe themselves to be natural-born fighter pilots. An extremely small percentage of them are right. And even for those who are, natural talent is not enough to succeed at this academy."

[Carré Inirial]

A sigh slipped past her lips as the hand toying with her curls rose to pinch the bridge of her nose.

"Natural talent needs to be supplemented by discipline, training, and strictly monitored conduct. To become one of the Empire's finest defenders, one must dedicate their every effort and their very life to the cause." She replied, quoting the pilot portion of the Academy Code word for word.

[Tannis V'larr]

"I have always considered that passage to be unfortunately worded," Tannis said. "Talent is not supplemented by discipline and training. It is unlocked by them. Only with training can you realize your potential. Only with discipline can you maintain a high standard of excellence. You are, by a wide margin, the most talented pilot I have instructed. However, if I had to send a flight of four of my trainees into combat, you would not be among them. You lack discipline. This makes you a liability to yourself and to your wingmates."

[Carré Inirial]

There wasn't anything to say.

He had a point, and she knew it. Hell, she wouldn't trust herself, why would anyone else?

Carré met his gaze only briefly before hers dropped down to her twisted and forlorn instrument panels. Reminding her in stark silence that had this not been a simulation, she'd be dead. Her emerald gaze traveled slowly around her ruined cockpit, the dark switches and controls, the occasional spark flaring briefly before fading out.

[Tannis V'larr]

It was difficult to read her expression through the simulated canopy glass, but her silence spoke volumes.

"You say you cannot imagine yourself doing anything other than flying," Tannis continued. "If that is the case, then you must first pay your dues. I am not obligated to give you opportunities to showcase your talents. On the contrary, I am obligated to expose every weakness in your style, every fault in your decision-making. I want to see you at your worst every day, because that is the only way you will ever rise to meet your potential as a pilot. If I present you with greater challenges than any other cadet under my care, it is only because of my high estimation of your abilities."

[Carré Inirial]

"I would venture to say, then, that today has been my worst thus far at the Academy."

Fingers slid through her curls as she righted herself from being slumped in her seat and straightened her shoulders a bit. Emerald eyes were still dark with touch of anger, though it was patently obvious that it was directed at herself.

For having been so...foolish, to put it mildly.

"Perhaps you would consider accepting an apology for the earlier incident? It was a shining example of my rather prodigious temper flying wholly out of control. I will endeavor to not let it happen again."

[Tannis V'larr]

"You would be wise to do so," Tannis replied. "As always, I endeavor to be available to discuss your performance outside of class. So long as these discussions do not involve fisticuffs. Apology accepted."

He opened the hatch of his simulator pod - Carré could see the training hangar through the port where outer space should have been. "You are dismissed, cadet. Please remember your report for our next meeting."