Fight or Flight

[Kamon Vondiranach]

"Corbin!"

"Sir?"

The pilot looked up from putting on his boots. He was getting outfitted for patrol duties for the day, just as he always did. One of the few non-bugs that lived on Surron now, there weren't a lot of people to do patrol work. Incidentally that meant he didn't get a lot of rest and spent most of his days at work. There was plenty of tail to be chased, but he didn't get to chase it. Being one of the best meant too many responsibilities. He kind of hated that, but he put up with it because, even though he was a fighter pilot, he hated war.

"Report to hangar twenty-four. You've got a special assignment today."

"Yes, sir."

Special assignment. That didn't sound good. Last time he'd gotten one of those he'd had to scrub latrines for a month. The price you paid for one little prank on your superior officer. It had been ill advised, though, and he'd been drunk at the time. He deserved the punishment and he wouldn't argue otherwise. Pulling on his jacket, he closed his locker and stood to walk over to the mirror and smoothed out his hair.

"I don't think smooth hair is a requirement," a female voice said.

"Sara," he said with a small smirk. "I have to look good though. This hair is my gift to womankind."

"A poor gift, then. You should get it buzzed. You'd look better."

"Ouch," he said, clasping a hand over his heart. "You wound me."

"Yeah, yeah. You better get going before you get in trouble."

He chuckled and offered her a wink before heading to the door to see himself out. Time to go see what the assignment was.

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Corbin whistled when he stepped into the hangar. He'd expected something like cleaning the hangar, or doing mechanical work for the day. What he was staring at, though, was a beautiful, pristine fighter the likes of which he'd never seen before in his life. Slender and wedge shaped like an A-wing, but it was wider than one. On top of that, he could see at least four lasers and two of what he guessed were torpedo tubes. On the bottom? Was that an ion cannon? This thing was built to do some serious damage. He didn't think he'd ever seen a starfighter like this before, so what was it doing here and what was he supposed to do with it?

He walked over to the ship and ran his hand over the hull. Smooth as butter.

"Like it?"

Spinning around, he found himself looking at a Zabrak.

"She's sleek, that's for sure. Who are you and why am I here, sir?"

"My name doesn't really matter, nor does who I work for. Let's just say that I work for your superiors and leave it at that. This is a Guardian. She's a prototype space superiority fighter. You're hear to put her through the ringer, as they say."

Test pilot? Well, he couldn't recall ever doing that. Normally that was rather dangerous work. Craft like these often had bugs in their initial model that made them lethal to the pilots. Not knowing who this Zabrak worked for could mean he worked for some shoddy starship manufacturer and he'd be eating space dust. That didn't really sit well with him, but as much as he wanted to say no, he didn't have the grounds or authority to do so. An order was an order, whether you liked it or not. He turned and looked up at the cockpit, wondering what it was going to look like on the inside. Would it be comfortable or just functional?

"I suppose I should go put on my flight suit."

"Actually, you need to wear this one." He kicked his foot at a small crate. "The Guardian doesn't come equipped with life support so you need a suit equipped with it. Take the crate and get suited up, then we can get started."

Great. Now he really felt good about this.

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

Well, the suit fit at least somewhat. That was better than he'd expected. Only downside was that it was basically a TIE Pilot's flight suit with a different helmet. It felt rather disgusting to be wearing it. TIE pilots worked for the Imperial types. Scumbags that didn't like anyone that wasn't human and were alright with blowing up worlds to get whatever it was that they wanted. No thanks. But once again, it didn't matter what he wanted. He had to wear it regardless. It was either that or die once he took the Guardian up out of the atmosphere. That really wasn't on his agenda for the day, so he figured he'd sacrifice his dignity.

Returning to the hangar, he found a small flight crew was preparing the fighter, loading it and fueling it. He approached the ladder up to the cockpit much as he would have if it were an X-wing. Climbing up into it, he settled down in the seat and was surprised to find that it was actually rather comfortable. Not spacious, but comfortable. Standard control systems faced him. No etheric rudder, which was a bit of a bummer, but he studied the controls methodically before the Zabrak appeared at his elbow.

"The Guardian is equipped much like an X-wing but with the addition of an ion cannon at the base. She can come in handy against larger prey. She's just as fast and as maneuverable, making her a match for most craft you could face. Interceptors will be faster and more maneuverable, but they sacrifice firepower and shielding to become so. Speaking of shields, the Guardian has molecular shields. She can take a beating and she feeds on the energy of enemy weapons. Should keep you flying longer in a dogfight."

Molecular shields. That was a new one. He was used to the standard shields which weren't really that hard to take down. It took a few shots, which was often enough to allow an X-wing to take down its normally unshielded foes, but they couldn't take the kind of beating that a capital ship, or even a freighter, could. The Zabrak made it seemed like he'd have better shields than either in this thing, but he kind of doubted that was the case. Either way, if it was better than standard shields it kept him safer and he was all for being safer while flying a warmachine. Live to fly another day, and all that.

"Sounds beneficial."

"It will be. Start her up and head on out. I'll be in touch over comms." The Zabrak started down the ladder, then paused. "Oh, and don't scratch her. She's expensive."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

The powering up sequence was simple. As was liftoff. The repulsors hummed like well-tuned machines. He was actually kind of impressed with just how smooth it hovered. No jittery bouncing around. No feeling like the ship was going to shake itself apart. It was nice, really. He found himself smiling in spite of the fact that he was still at least somewhat sure that this was going to somehow turn into him biting the big one. When he pushed for throttle and shot out of the hangar into the atmosphere he totally forgot about that, though. Not only was she fast, she handled like a dream. Plus he didn't have to lock his s-foils in attack position. Everything was ready as soon as he pulled the trigger.

Which he sort of did by accident, but he didn't hit anything but ground, so that was good.

"Alright, we'll do weapons tests later, kid. Control yourself."

"Sorry. Itchy trigger finger."

"Scratch it later."

Hilarious. Seriously. Hilarious.

"Keep her in the atmosphere for now and put her through the paces. The regular climbs, dives, sharp turns, all of it. See how she handles zipping around the city, but don't get too crazy."

"Understood."

He pushed the throttle to max and races across the planets surface, barely keeping above the ground. He had to remind himself that this wasn't a land speeder, though, because if he hadn't pulled up when he did he'd have slammed right into a rock formation that loomed swiftly out of nowhere. A steep climb nearly had him breaching atmosphere before he flipped her over and dove down towards the ground, but banked sharply to turn towards the nearby city, still under construction to be the capital of the Reformation. Half built towers loomed above the ground and he approached them with near reckless abandon.

Flipping the sticks, he swooped around one, then around another, weaving his way through the city like a snake, and diving beneath cranes and construction droids at the last second. He was sure they were cussing him out in binary, but he didn't care. This was like sport flying. It was fun, and the Guardian was handling it like a charm. With each passing minute he was becoming more and more impressed with the ship.

"She handles like a dream. What's next?"

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

"Alright. She handles well in atmosphere, which is good. Her aerodynamic shape is bound to allow her to move well through the air. Let's take her up into space and see how she pushes."

"Right. Heading up."

He shimmied a bit in his seat and tugged on his flight suit where it had started sticking to him, but eventually had to give up on that. There was too much going on. Upwards he went until he broke atmosphere and zipped through the blackness of space. Here, with less drag, he flew even faster than he did on the planet below. The only difference was that it was harder to tell because there wasn't really anything to reference the way that there had been on the planet. Until he got close to the defensive fleet, anyway. As soon as he drew up on them he could really tell how fast he was going, zipping past capital ships and blasting by patrol ships.

It felt almost intuitive to space. Speaking of which, he flipped on the shields in order to make sure he didn't eat it by having some small space rock come zipping in to slam through the fighter like a hot knife through blue butter. That wouldn't be pleasant. He twisted and turned the fighter around, dancing with a couple of jockeys on patrol. These guys were from the fleet, though, and he didn't know them, though they sure seemed interested in the Guardian.

"She handles well up here, too. Little harder to tell how well without a frame of reference. Moving ships are hard to judge against."

"Just keep going like you are. We're taking readings based on how she reacts. We'll tell you when to move on."

"I can do this all day."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

He was having a downright good time zipping along through space, dodging the other ships, zipping along the hulls of larger vessels. In general he was basically terrorizing everyone because that was what he was being asked to do. Not explicitly, but it might as well have been the case. She handled like a dream, and even though he hated the flight suit he had to wear, the necessity for a life support system meant a fully sealed helmet, the ship itself made up for it. Speed and maneuverability were familiar to him since he'd flown a few X-wings, but the smoothness of handling in the newer modeled ship was better.

"Alright, enough joyriding, pilot. We've set up a system of buoys at the edge of the eastern daylight cycle. No ships are in the vicinity. Please test the weapons systems on them starting by shooting one with the lasers, the middle with the ion cannon, and the third with a torpedo."

"You got it."

He lined the fighter up with empty space and punched it full throttle, heading around the planets east side as aligned with the prominent direction of the other starships and the location of the nearly completed shipyard. Pushing the throttle to full, he zipped away through the stars until his scanners began to ping the targets. He lined up for a first pass on the laser target and made sure that his weapons were powered up before he flew at it and pulled the trigger, sending four bursts of energy flying it and destroying it. He whooped and flipped the fighter around through the air to come down at the second target from above, firing twice with the ion cannon until the buoy powered down.

"Looks like the ion cannon needs a little tweaking. Took me two shots."

"Got it, keep going."

He flipped the speed down to near zero and allowed the fighter to turn sharply, bringing him in line with the final buoy and drifting away from it since he then turned the engines off. With the targeting computer active, he set up the shot and then fired off a torpedo which splashed the buoy. Torpedo's didn't really miss.

"Alright, hold position while we analyze."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

"Everything seems to be fine on our end. We're fine with the results of your work and will tweak the ion cannon for-"

The man was suddenly cut off and all Corbin could hear was static. He tapped a finger at the comms, trying to get it to clear up the same way almost everyone tried, but failed, to do so. Something was clearly interfering with his communications system. He didn't understand what it was, but he figured they were just going to tell him to come back to the base anyway, so he flipped the fighter around and started heading back towards where the main bulk of the fleet was stacked up around the shipyards.

As he neared them, he figured out why the comms were out. A small, unidentified fleet had appeared in the system and were engaging the defensive forces. He could only shake his head in amusement because it was obvious that these ships weren't going to be enough to defeat the Reformation's forces, but part of the fleet was away to Ryloth in defense of the world from Techno Empire advances so their defensive measures were cut down considerably as a result. Perhaps that had been a diversionary gambit by that Empire? It was possible, but either way, a battle was raging.

"If there's one way to test a ship, it's in combat."

He punched the throttle to full and headed straight at the enemy forces. They had brought in carriers so there were plenty of enemy fighters for him to deal with. That was good. Dogfighting was the perfect test for a space superiority fighter such as this one. He was more than a little eager to see some real action. Now he'd get the chance.

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

They were uglies. Not even real fighters, but cobbled together things made from parts of various different fighter craft. These people were probably scavengers that had come to raid what they thought was a technologically inferior world. To be fair, prior to the Reformation's arrival, the Surronians were making small craft that were pretty good, but nowhere near the scale of what most of the galaxy was producing. They weren't really a militant society, either. Likely these people had shown up off and on to raid them over the years. They'd just picked a bad time to do so now, with the Reformation there. If he'd have been then, he'd have turned tail and run.

Uglies were still dangerous, though. A few stray shots pinged his shields, but they ate it up like candy. He could only laugh at that as he flipped the fighter around into a dive that brought him in behind one of the craft that was on the tail of a friendly. Two well placed shots and he blew the fighter apart. Apparently that one hadn't had shields.

"Sucks to be you, pal."

He rolled the fighter to the right and picked off two more craft that were flying at his ninety degree mark before racing across towards one of the small corvettes that had arrived with the enemy fleet. He unloaded several volleys with his ion cannon before skimming over and above the shields of the vessel and flying into the heart of a dogfight. A torpedo lanced across his front, narrowly missing and he inverted and dove to come down around behind the ship that had fired it. It took a couple more shots, but he eventually killed it to. Really this was like shooting fish in a barrel. He saw several Reformation pilots splash out, though. They had good fighters, but not as good as this one.

"We better buy these or we're stinkin' stupid."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

The battle was short lived. As he expected, the Reformation's defensive force made short work of the enemy capital ships once they bore down upon them. In the end, most of the fighters didn't have hyperdrives, so they kept fighting to the death. Corbin himself killed numerous of them, though he did take the time to knock a few of the ships down with the ion cannon so that their intelligence forces would have someone to interrogate. Yeah, even thought about those sleeze bags from time to time, too. But mostly it was just that he wanted to find out who these people were and why they'd been stupid enough to fight the Reformation.

Mop up duty was simple for him since he didn't have to tango along with a squadron at the moment. All he had to do was flit around between masses of debris and look for anything still moving and fighting. Easy enough to do. The ones lurking with damaged ships were denied the pleasure of a last kill when his shields ate up their attacks and he pumped them full of his own. It was like fish in a barrel. It really was. There wasn't anything on the battlefield at the moment that could match up to the Guardian. Not even their own craft.

Eventually though, his work was done. And with comms restored he was getting an absolute earful from the Zabrak on the ground about endangering the craft and the fact that it had been expensive to produce. Seriously, the fact that scientists put more value on the slab of metal and electronics than the being that flew it or the fact that these weapons of war were meant to defend someone was disturbing. He couldn't think about being a scientist if that was what it meant to be one. Though he supposed now he understood why so many scientists were single, lonely bastards drinking away in the cantinas.

"Yeah, yeah. You know, you picked me for this assignment because I'm good at what I do. So you might have a little faith next time? Besides, she's not even scratched. Shields are fully intact and I killed at least an entire enemy squadron by myself. I'd say that's the best test you could give this bird."

"Just bring it back, Corbin. Now."

 

[Kamon Vondiranach]

He brought the fighter back into the hangar as he was instructed to do. As much as he would have liked to take her out for another spin, he knoew when it wasn't a good time to press his luck. This scientist or whatever was really getting antsy about getting his fighter back in one piece. Considering he also didn't want to end up getting in trouble with his superior officers he figured it would probably be a good idea not to piss the guy off anymore than he already had. So he flew her back in and settled her back on her landing struts without doing anything dangerously stupid.

After powering down, he popped the hatch and climbed out of the craft, once the ladder was in place, and quickly removed his helmet. His head was sopping wet from sweat. One thing he'd be sure to note to his superior officers was that, if they bought these, they were going to have to get some better flight gear so that they didn't end up overheating. If he'd spent longer inside of the craft he probably would have passed out from heat exhaustion without even realizing he was hot. The fun of flying the ship drew ones attention away from the realities of how dangerous it actually was to do so.

"Thank you, pilot. That will be enough."

"My pleasure. She handles like a dream and she's got some real punch. I hope we get these soon."

"Well, that's out of my hands."

"I'll put in the recommendation. I saw enough of our people die in that engagement to warrant it. Not many, but enough. Uglies shouldn't take us down like that."

The Zabrak shrugged as he walked around the craft examining it.

"You're dismissed pilot. Go report to your commanding officer."

Corbin watched the Zabrak for a few moments then made a dismissive tsch before turning about and leaving the hangar. He was going to follow through with what he said. Having the Guardians would be beneficial to their starfighter corp. Even though this was just a prototype, when they went into full blown construction he wanted the Reformation to get them. Certainly would be better than what they had now.