The Hair Knight
Capital ships lobbed salvos of turbolasers across the battle's starfield.
Unforgiving asteroids and meteors hurtled carelessly into the path of any unsuspecting fighter pilot.
Enemy fighters and point defense turrets spit volleys of blasterfire at the Republic starfighters.
Relatively speaking, the battle was quite tame. Jerek had been in a simulator fight worse than this, with odds stacked up far against him. The new reality of the conflict's everpresent threat to his mortality, a morbid reminder that he couldn't simply log out and walk away if he failed here today, was pushed far to the back of his mind, desperately fighting to get out, desperate for his attention.
Well, take a number.
Flying a J-1 Class Starfighter was a little like riding a bucking equine and still managing to take potshots at a target. The craft was little more than an engine with guns and a place for Jerek to sit, and it was more than happy to keep him pressed tightly against the pilot seat's formed gel padding as the vessel accelerated through several Gs of thrust. The powerful inertial dampeners of the J-1 tempered the force, but the constant thrust still resulted in the feeling of an enormous weight on the boy's adolescent chest, making it difficult to breath. If the order of the day had been to fly a straight line, that would have been enough to deal with.
Now add in the incoming blaster fire from enemy fighters. The Jackals' own fighters were just as experienced, if not more so, than the fourteen year old ace in command of the J-1 named Unity. His inexperience was tempered by his strong connection to the Force, a fact that made the Unity something within the realm of his control and not simply a ballistic rocket. As the little fighter pitched, rolled and yawed in an attempt to stay out of the hail of superheated plasma, it was clear that the term control was used in the broadest way possible.
"Keep your heads up and don't smash into a rock." That was the eloquent advice from [member='Sressechka'], or Angel One now that they were in flight. That was actually the easiest advice to follow, as the field's rocks generally erred on the size of large and able to be picked up on scanners. Avoiding them was much easier than the pinpoint-sized blaster bolts coming from the Jackal fighters, relegating them to the category of environmental hazard, something to be wary of as the boy dodged the nimble craft between the blaster bolts.
So, no, philosophical distinctions between reality and simulation were not in the forefront of Jerek's mind at the moment.
Comms suddenly crackled to life, a desperate call of confusion and then warning after Silver Three's fighter was damaged by an exploding mine. The warning was all that Jerek needed to avoid the obliteration of his own craft, the smaller J-1 had no shields to speak of and wouldn't survive that same kind of hit. The asteroid nearest him, once a happily rotating rock of indeterminable composition, was now nothing more than the epicenter of a quickly-spreading cloud of dust, debris and violent meteors searching for a taste of starfighter.
Flipping the Unity over on its head, Jerek quickly fired his engines to slow his momentum in the direction he had been traveling. He ignored the remaining blaster bolts from the Jackal fighters. Between potential death from the blasters and certain death from the rapidly expanding cloud of a former asteroid, the boy knew which one he was going to concentrate on. As the fighter decelerated on its original vector, Jerek yawed towards the center of the explosion and flipped the small craft so the tail pointed towards the expanding ejecta, drifting for just a few seconds more until, with a force the felt like a blow to the chest, he pushed the small fighter away from the hazy frey.
His radar was useless now, clouded with an everpresent blanket of once-grey-now-orange dots that represented the former asteroids. Jerek let his eyes lose focus, opening up his mind to the whispers of the Force, letting it guide his hands directly. They moved, almost imperceptibly, to avoid the small meteors like hail, the J-1's reaction thrusters allowing for the minute control necessary to survive the day.
Shaking his head to clear his field of vision from the blond hairs that had snuck across his eyes, the boy eyed the radar screen which was now reporting mostly clear of the hazardous asteroid debris. The largest of the exploded fragments were far enough apart that the radar could tag them individually for avoidance. Flipping his ship back around to toggle another direction change, Jerek toggled the commset mounted around his head, "Silver Six here, I'm clear of the field for now. Heading back to regroup."
Through all of this, Jerek's singular thought was a somewhat morbid, halfway amused and uncannily deadpanned, Elias would have loved this.
[member='Mongo Booshi Mella'] [member='Dallen Thayne'] [member='Evan Kenner'] [member='Dair Cotarin'] [member='Kian Karr'] [member='Cadan Tazi'] [member='Tiali Orazio'] [member='Xander Black'] [member='Zylah Dvale'] [member='Sressechka'] [member='Gir Quee'] [member='Flannigan Mcnash'] [member='Ka-Aver']
Unforgiving asteroids and meteors hurtled carelessly into the path of any unsuspecting fighter pilot.
Enemy fighters and point defense turrets spit volleys of blasterfire at the Republic starfighters.
Relatively speaking, the battle was quite tame. Jerek had been in a simulator fight worse than this, with odds stacked up far against him. The new reality of the conflict's everpresent threat to his mortality, a morbid reminder that he couldn't simply log out and walk away if he failed here today, was pushed far to the back of his mind, desperately fighting to get out, desperate for his attention.
Well, take a number.
Flying a J-1 Class Starfighter was a little like riding a bucking equine and still managing to take potshots at a target. The craft was little more than an engine with guns and a place for Jerek to sit, and it was more than happy to keep him pressed tightly against the pilot seat's formed gel padding as the vessel accelerated through several Gs of thrust. The powerful inertial dampeners of the J-1 tempered the force, but the constant thrust still resulted in the feeling of an enormous weight on the boy's adolescent chest, making it difficult to breath. If the order of the day had been to fly a straight line, that would have been enough to deal with.
Now add in the incoming blaster fire from enemy fighters. The Jackals' own fighters were just as experienced, if not more so, than the fourteen year old ace in command of the J-1 named Unity. His inexperience was tempered by his strong connection to the Force, a fact that made the Unity something within the realm of his control and not simply a ballistic rocket. As the little fighter pitched, rolled and yawed in an attempt to stay out of the hail of superheated plasma, it was clear that the term control was used in the broadest way possible.
"Keep your heads up and don't smash into a rock." That was the eloquent advice from [member='Sressechka'], or Angel One now that they were in flight. That was actually the easiest advice to follow, as the field's rocks generally erred on the size of large and able to be picked up on scanners. Avoiding them was much easier than the pinpoint-sized blaster bolts coming from the Jackal fighters, relegating them to the category of environmental hazard, something to be wary of as the boy dodged the nimble craft between the blaster bolts.
So, no, philosophical distinctions between reality and simulation were not in the forefront of Jerek's mind at the moment.
Comms suddenly crackled to life, a desperate call of confusion and then warning after Silver Three's fighter was damaged by an exploding mine. The warning was all that Jerek needed to avoid the obliteration of his own craft, the smaller J-1 had no shields to speak of and wouldn't survive that same kind of hit. The asteroid nearest him, once a happily rotating rock of indeterminable composition, was now nothing more than the epicenter of a quickly-spreading cloud of dust, debris and violent meteors searching for a taste of starfighter.
Flipping the Unity over on its head, Jerek quickly fired his engines to slow his momentum in the direction he had been traveling. He ignored the remaining blaster bolts from the Jackal fighters. Between potential death from the blasters and certain death from the rapidly expanding cloud of a former asteroid, the boy knew which one he was going to concentrate on. As the fighter decelerated on its original vector, Jerek yawed towards the center of the explosion and flipped the small craft so the tail pointed towards the expanding ejecta, drifting for just a few seconds more until, with a force the felt like a blow to the chest, he pushed the small fighter away from the hazy frey.
His radar was useless now, clouded with an everpresent blanket of once-grey-now-orange dots that represented the former asteroids. Jerek let his eyes lose focus, opening up his mind to the whispers of the Force, letting it guide his hands directly. They moved, almost imperceptibly, to avoid the small meteors like hail, the J-1's reaction thrusters allowing for the minute control necessary to survive the day.
Shaking his head to clear his field of vision from the blond hairs that had snuck across his eyes, the boy eyed the radar screen which was now reporting mostly clear of the hazardous asteroid debris. The largest of the exploded fragments were far enough apart that the radar could tag them individually for avoidance. Flipping his ship back around to toggle another direction change, Jerek toggled the commset mounted around his head, "Silver Six here, I'm clear of the field for now. Heading back to regroup."
Through all of this, Jerek's singular thought was a somewhat morbid, halfway amused and uncannily deadpanned, Elias would have loved this.
[member='Mongo Booshi Mella'] [member='Dallen Thayne'] [member='Evan Kenner'] [member='Dair Cotarin'] [member='Kian Karr'] [member='Cadan Tazi'] [member='Tiali Orazio'] [member='Xander Black'] [member='Zylah Dvale'] [member='Sressechka'] [member='Gir Quee'] [member='Flannigan Mcnash'] [member='Ka-Aver']