Training: Maal

[Khendon Sevon]

You are currently flying the antiquated TIE Interceptor, modified with shields. You are on routine patrol with three other fighters in box formation. You are investigating a gravity anomaly in sector 5E of the Delteon sector.

As you approach, three Vong coral skippers pull onto your wingmates’ collective tails and begin blasting them, one quickly falls pray to the barrage of plasma before you and your wingmate can brake formation and pull away from the volley.

(Now, you must roleplay this action by yourself, playing both the aggressor and the defender. You should use your imagination and be as descriptive as possible. Separate your reply into posts and remember, it’s not how well you do, but how well you write.)

[Maal Lah]

Maal Lah radioed to the two remaining ships in his flight. "Go down now, HARD! Pull in close and overlap shields!"
As the three Interceptors turned sharply down plasma fire skittered around their shields. Maal saw his shield meter drop rapidly.
"OK. On my mark, level out and reverse direction. Remember to stick close together. "
The other two pilots double-clicked to show their confirmation.
"Three. Two. One. Mark."

[Maal Lah]

The main qualities of the TIE Interceptor included its powerful lasers, but most of all, its exceptional acceleration and maneuverability. Even as capable as dovin basals were, without yammosk control the pursuing coralskippers were unable to compete with the manueuver completed by the three Interceptors.
The three pilots of Maal Lah's shield trio emerged from their reverse facing the enemy. However his trio was a considerable distance from the chasing coralskippers. Maal Lah immediately took the time to issue orders.
"Listen Up. We focus fire on one skip at a time. Wait for my shot then fire at that skip. Then race past them and reform."
"Yessir"
"As ordered." The acknowledgements from his pilots chiimed in.
The coralskippers were much closer now. "Go straight at them. Now."

[Maal Lah]

Barzakh Hul peered through his cognition hood at the approaching infidel fighters. They were keeping close together, offering each other the protection of the others' shields. Barsakh clenched his teeth together. These infidels, he knew, would use the same honorless tactics the rest of them used. They did not know how to extract proper honor as from a one-on-one duel.
Lacking the ability to communicate to his fellow pilots without a yammosk, he could only hope that they would kill the infidels with honor. Which he knew they would.

[Maal Lah]

The enemy fighters came screaming at him firing their lasers. His dovin basal quickly blocked the first set of lasers, then the second set. Barzakh noticed that they were all concentrating their fire on him. Their infidel tactics! And now the third set arced in on his coralskipper. And now the fighters screamed past him. His overloaded dovin basal could no longer protect him. The lasers pierced his cockpit. And Barzakh Hul was no more.

[Maal Lah]

Behind them, the third pair of lasers had shot through the cockpit of the enemy coralskipper. Although the pilot must be dead the fighter still zoomed on, oblivious now to the three Interceptors. Before he could bring his trio back in another attack, Maal Lah noticed flashes in his peripheral vision. When he turned his head, he saw plasma bursts hitting the shield of one of his fellow fighter. He quickly swiveled his fighter in a 180-degree arc and came in on the attacking coralskipper from the side.
Maal saw his wingmate's shields fail. The victorious coralskipperblew his wingmate out of existence with a vicious plasma barrage. But the enemy pilot's one-minded persecution of one fighter had spelled doom for him. Even as Maal snapped a laser burst at the coralskipper, his sole surviving wingmate did the same from the opposit e side. The coralskipper exploded in an orange cloud. Now the odds were 2 to 1.

[Maal Lah]

Kadzil Hul, the last remaining Vong pilot, roared a Vong battle cry as he headed for glorious victory, or death. "Do'Roik Vong Pratte!"
The infidel pilots were not ready for his vicious attack, he saw gleefully as he approached. They had come close together to overlap their shield. That would make them easy prey. His magma cannons pumped out a barrage of plasma projectiles. His joy increased as one of the projectiles blasted through the shield and struck one of his enemies. The plasma burst right through the durasteel that joined the cockpit to the starboard wing.
The starboard wing snapped off and tumbled into space. The fighter itself began a hard, uncontrolled spin to its port side. As the spin slowly leveld out, it became apparent that the pilot was not dead. However, that fighter was not capable of combat anymore. Kadzil turned his attention to the last remaining infidel fighter. And what he saw surprised him.

[Maal Lah]

While his wingmate was being destroyed, Maal had not been idle. Being on the starboard side of fighter that was hit, he had sideslipped to his starboard side to avoid the first shots fired. When his partner was hit, Maal had throttled into an upward arc to avoid debris. Now he came swooping down on a dive towards the last enemy fighter, blaster cannons firing.
However, instead of dodging away, the coral skipper maneuvered right in front of Maal's fighter's path and created a black hole with its dovin basal. Thats an odd tactic, Maal thought, Its already dodged my lasers and now it can't strip my shields
Realization dawned as his ship started groaning under excess strain.He's trying to draw me into the black hole.Maal began a frantic maneuver and sent his ship on a steeper dive to push it past the black hole. He pulled out of the dive. And there was an explosion.

[Maal Lah]

His cockpit clouded over, then instantly cleared. there was nothing directly above him, but far in the distance...He saw a fighter, its Quadanium solar panels glistening. It was missing a wing.
It took Maal a second to realize that it was his own damaged wingmate who had, incredibly, destroyed the enemy coralskipper.
"How did you do that?" Maal queried over his comlink.
"I didn't," came the reply, "He did it to himself."
"How?"
"I dont know. One minute it was swinging around to have its black hole follow you, then it disappeared. Must have had its own dovin basal swallow itself."
"That's...," Maal struggled to come up with a word, "Amazing. Just amazing."
"I know."
"Are you able to fly your ship back to base, in the condition it is?"
"Actually, I used repulsorlifts to get to this spot, but as long as I counter the starboard spin by using the port rudder, I think I should be fine. Now, let's get out of here."
"Hey. I'll be doing the ordering around here. Let's get the heck out of here now."

[Khendon Sevon]

Warning klaxons sounded at the Federacy station in sector 6E. “Report!” said the commanding officer, a captain by the name of Tyfrik Kardel.

“Sir,” said the sensor’s officer, “a Vong battle group has been detected near sector 50E2 heating towards sector 4E!”

“Don’t we have ships on patrol in 5E” inquired the Captain in a frantic voice.

“Yes, Captain… uh… Sir, it appears two of them have been lost!”

“Wha… why didn’t they report enemy contact? This could have been avoided?! Gha! If we get out of this alive, I’m going to have the damn wings of those pilots!”

“Sir, shall I recall them?”

“Yes, god damnit, recall them! And alert the damn fleet, we need muscle, right now!”

“Yes, Sir!”

*******

Green letters appeared on Maal’s front display, filling the cockpit with an eerie green glow:

“URGENT: Return to base. System under attack from Vong.”

[Khendon Sevon]

“Bring it on the main screen, damnit!” said Tyfrik.

“Aye, aye, Sir!”

“Damnit. Those aren’t Vong, they’re Peace Brigade… damn them and their foul kind! Launch the sector defense forces, that god damn fleet better get here now!”

“Yes, Sir… as you command.”

“Yeah, yeah… and get those two pilots into the fricken fray!”

*********

“Delta One and Delta Two, do you copy? Go to sector 4E, form up with the sector defense force and prepare to repel enemy!”

[Maal Lah]

DDamn, thought Maal, I should have alerted Base. Of course this was an advance scout for an invasion force He turned his comlink and ordered his wingmate. "There's a Vong task force attacking base. I'll have to leave you behind. I need to get there as fast as possible! Make whatever speed you can and get back to base!"
"Copy. Good Luck"
"I'll need it," muttered Maal to himself as he distanced himself from his wingmate.
As he drew closer to Base HQ, he saw flashes in the distance, slowly becoming more numerous. The battle was underway.

[Khendon Sevon]

A quartet of ST-1000 sector defense craft made a run for the enemy formation of ships, turbolasers erupting with vengeful energy, striking the invading force but doing little more than outlining the shields.

The enemy had two antiquated dreadnaughts with them, a Nebulon B frigate, and several freighters. All angling towards the small defense force consisting of eight ST-1000’s and a single Fast Attack Frigate.

“Prepare to fight,” said Commander Joran, “I want every battery locked onto the first of the two Dreadnaughts… ready, fire!”

The mass cannons of the FAF fired, ripping through the shields of the dreadnaught and colliding with its armor, burning holes in the side and burrowing within, explosions ringing from the aft and fore, where the warheads had been trained.

“Sir! They’re launching fighters! Looks like X-wings! A full wing!”

“Where’s our support from the base?!”

“Sir, the base reports they’ve launched their complement of twenty TIE Interceptors and six TIE Executioners.”

“Damnit, we need more!”

[Maal Lah]

"Sir, Delta Two is damaged and is heading back to base. He's out of the fight. I've marked the coordinates you sent me and I'm heading in. " Maal clicked the comlink off. What he hadn't mentioned to his commander was that he was low on fuel, his shields and ship were damaged in the previous dogfight, and he was damn tired. But that didn't excuse him from doing his duty. He pushed his speed up to maximum and zoomed toward the conflict.
As he raced toward the battle, Maal pumped shield and weapons energyy into driving his engines faster. His speed picked up noticeably. As he became close to the battle, so that he could make out the capital ships distinctly, he noticed an two things. First, His sensor scope didn't pick up any gravitic anomalies, and the enemy ships he saw were made out of metal. He realized that the enemy was the Peace Brigade. Maal laughed out aloud. The Peace Brigade was a joke when it came to fighting. He had been fearing another deadly conflict with coralskippers. The Brigade used old Y-Wings and Z-95 HeadHunters. This would be a piece of cake. Maal Lah now zoomed to battle with a new enthusiasm.

[Maal Lah]

Maal joined with his fellow fighters and broadcast a call. "All Delta fighters report in. "
"Delta Three here"
"Delta Six, two lit"
"Delta Five, optimum"
"Delta FOur, ready"
"Delta Seven, anxious to fight"
With Delta Two going back to base, that left him with five fighters, six including himself. Against 72 X-Wings. Maal shook his head to clear the odds from them. He issued terse orders to his pilots.
"Separate into two shield trios. Three, Four, with me. Five, take Six and Seven. Give each other protection from your shield. And fire straight. Understood"
His pilots rang in confirmations.
"Okay. Then break. Now."

[Khendon Sevon]

Six TIE Executioners erupted into space, laser gatling already firing, erupting on a formation of X-wings from the side. The devastating weapons crumbled the shields of the formation before they could peel out and a torrent of torpedoes was unleashed from the devilish vessels, engulfing six of the enemy fighters in a ball of flame.

The maneuver was smart, but it had cost the Executioners, they were now in the middle of the enemy formation, under heavy anti-fighter fire. Three squadrons of X-wings peeled off and dodged shots from the Executioners, heading towards them, weapons blaring.

“We’ve got to hold them off!” said Joran, “lock onto the Neb B! Let’s give our limited fighters a break.”

“Aye, Commander. All craft firing now.” The blasts launched forward with great force, green streams of energy dancing over the shields of the frigate, crippling its shields.

A return volley was launched and incinerated two of the ST-1000 security vessels, turning them into nothing but charred, twisted pieces of durasteel.

“We’ll never survi…” the Commander’s speech was broken off as his FAF was struck with heavy fire from the Dreadnaughts, now only a few hundred meters off the bow of the craft.

[Maal Lah]

Maal cursed as he saw the bow of the FAF Vengeance after the attack of the Dreadnaughts. Maal saw the Frigate begin a lazy roll to port before he realized the ship must be out of control. The area where the bridge had been was a smoking, charred ruin. The devastation had also stretched its way across the front of the ship, marked in long, dark furrows of charred durasteel.
Maal sighed and turned back to his shield trio. He had to concentrate on his own survival. He radioed the two other pilots in his trio.
"Angle for that patch, the one where our Executioners are.Full Throttle." That would take them to where six Executioners were being hammered by at least two squadrons' worth of X-Wings. Even as his trio raced to rescue them. One of them took a torpedo in his engine. The explosion lightened up the cockpit of Maal's Interceptor. "Remember," Maal cautioned his wingmates, "The X-Wings have torps and we don't. Don't stay still long enough for them to get a lock. Split up once we hit the furball. Fire fast and hard." And they were in the midst of the melee.
Maal snapped off two shots at a diving X-wing. He then snap -rolled to port and looped around into a dive. That not only helped him avoid the shots of a trailing X-Wing, but put him right on the tail of the first X-Wing. He pursued it, snapping off dozens of shots, until one of them plowed right into the upper starboard engine. That X-Wing dissolved in a burst of fiery light. Maal smiled. One down, seventy-one to go

[Khendon Sevon]

At first the crippled FAF wallowed in its own misery, spewing internal components like yesterday’s lunch. The craft made an eerie creaking noise, its death cry, and erupted in a brilliant flame, incinerating all critical components, leaving no trace of its technology, no salvageable piece, no evidence to link it to the Federacy.

The six remaining ST-1000’s angled towards the Nebulon B frigate and maxed out their speed, weapons firing steadily, causing dark, deep gashes to form in the super-heating hull of the vessel. One of the ST-1000’s was struck and shuttered, a wing tearing off and causing the craft to begin an uncontrollable spin.

The five remaining ST-1000’s broke off their run and angled towards the nearest Dreadnaught. The crippled ST-1000 collided with the thin neck of the Nebulon frigate, severing the vital organ.

The TIE Executioners were being badly beaten, the sheer volume of enemy fighters was causing them to become sloppy, two were turned into bright spots on the infrared spectrum when they neared one of the Dreadnaughts, entering its firing field.

If the battle didn’t end soon, they would all die.

[Maal Lah]

The bridge of the Nebulon-B frigate slowly broke and rolled away from the body that housed the engine. Escape pods jettisoned from the bridge like pollen from a flower.
Maal's fighter group was not doing so well. In less that two-and-a-half minutes. He had lost two fighters. Overall there were only 15 federacy starfighers still combat operational. Four Interceptors and eleven Executioners. There were still fourty-five X-Wings in the field.
The twenty original Executioners had had their commander killed early in the fight. Now they had noone to direct them. Maal opened up a transmission to all remaining Federacy fighters.
"Okay. Listen Up. This is how we survive. All Executioners head to where our St's are tangling with the Dreadnoughts. Unload your entire payload on the crippled Dreadnought. The St's should b eable to protect you from pursuing X-Wings. Deltas, we act as a rearguard for the Executioners. Understood?"
A chorus of "Aye"s greeted him.
"Okay. Break off from this engagement now."
Even as they peeled off, Maal saw one Executioners go up in a brilliant explosion. He rejoined with his three squadron mates at the rear of the group. Almost four squadrons of X-wings swooped down on his four-man gang. Maal designated a target and told his wingmates, "Fire!" Four, then four more sets of lasers poured out at the desgnated target. The first three took down the forward shield. The other five decimated the ship. Maal quickly targeted another X-Wing., and his four man group fired. That X-Wing became as luminous as a sun. Not a bad start, Maal thought, not bad. But there were still more than forty of them left. And then it began to rain turbolasers.

[Khendon Sevon]

A brilliant rain of gold happened all at once, not from craft being destroyed, but from the Sevon-class star destroyer Crimson Wake shedding its negative matter lining as it fell from hyperspace. At first, the vessel loomed over the fighting, then the defensive banks’ ports rolled open and the hydraulics kicked in, the weapons being displayed proudly.

A rain of energy was unleashed from the Sevon-class, X-wings going up in blinding explosions all around the field of battle. The Crimson Wake had made a precision jump directly into the fray.

The massive craft unleashed a broadside into the nearest dreadnaught, terminating its functionality with a bright discharge of energy that caused the armor on the antiquated vessel to pop and bubble, then buckle, bodies being sucked out and thrown like rag dolls.

The commander of the vessel sent a general order, “All fighters land, we’ll handle it from here.” With that, TIE Executioner MK 4’s rolled out of the belly’s quick launch port, four gatlings unleashing revenge.

[Maal Lah]

Maal almost died with relief when he saw Crimson Wake appear. The huge Star Destroyer was more than adequate to take on two Dreadnoughts, one of them crippled. Crimson Wake began to turn to port and then its starboard turbolaser banks unleashed a furious barrage at the remaining Dreadnought. The shields of the ship help up for a second, then failed. Turbolasers continued unabated into the heart of the ship. When the barrage was over, the Dreadnought was gone, obliterated into a thousand pieces of junk metal.
In the meantime, the Star Destroyer's huge complement of Executioners was unleashing hell among the X-Wings. Their entry into the fight destroyed a dozen enemy fighters and damaged at least two dozen. In the next three minutes, the Executioners proceeded to eliminate all the remaining X-Wings. shredding them by virtue of fresh laser, fresh ships, and fresh pilots. Not to mention better skill. Within five minutes, there was no sign that any enemy had ever been in the system, save for the occasional whirling piece of scrap metal.
Maal Lah regrouped his three surviving wingmates and turned them in a course that would take them to the main hangar of the Star Destroyer. As he headed there, a warning klaxon beeped. Maal glanced at his monitor. Almost out of fuel. Good thing the fight ended then.
The simulator field then suddenly turned black, the stars and ships disappearing, and the cockpit monitors turned off. Maal Lah collapsed and sank back into the simulator couch. The cockpit of the simulator hissed as it opened. Maal rested for a second, then hauled himself out of the simulator