Faction (FO) Trial of Aces

[Lyra Ventor]

The hangar was silent.

No engines screamed. No fuel burned. No heat shimmered off polished hulls. Only light remained, cold and deliberate, reflecting across rows of TIE cockpits that sat open and waiting. Each was wired into a sleek, blackened simulation rig that rose from the deck like a spine of metal and glass, cables feeding into neural interfaces while displays flickered with standby telemetry. The air hummed faintly with contained energy, the kind that never quite settled.

This was not a battlefield. It was something far more controlled. And far more revealing.

"Pilots."

The voice carried across the chamber, calm and absolute, cutting cleanly through the quiet.

"Today's exercise will be conducted in a full-spectrum combat simulation. Environmental variables, flight physics, and damage response will mirror the conditions of live engagement. You will not be relying on instinct alone. You will be relying on discipline."

Above, massive projection arrays ignited.

Darkness flooded the walls, then shifted and reshaped into sky. Cloud layers formed in slow motion as atmospheric distortion rolled outward, a horizon stretching into existence, artificial yet indistinguishable from the real thing. Debris fields flickered into place. Target beacons pulsed faintly in the distance.

A battlefield, built from nothing.

Technicians moved down the line, securing final connections, checking neural links, and calibrating response latency to near-zero thresholds. Each cockpit sealed with a controlled hiss as pilots were locked into place, their physical surroundings dissolving into something else entirely.

"Pain response is enabled at a reduced threshold. System feedback is immediate. Loss conditions are absolute. Do not mistake simulation for safety."

Inside the cockpits, systems came alive. Targeting reticles, velocity markers, and threat indicators snapped into clarity as the simulation took hold, replacing metal and deck with open sky and infinite drop.

"For the duration of this exercise, there are no squads. No ranks. Only performance."

The battlefield stabilized fully, resolving into something that felt indistinguishable from reality. Atmospheric drag pulled at the hull. Wind currents shifted unpredictably through the cloud layers. Distance stretched and distorted in a way that forced constant adjustment.

"You will engage until eliminated," the voice continued, quieter now but no less absolute. "Or until you prove that you cannot be."

Across the sky, TIE fighters began to phase into existence, already in motion as the system placed them into the engagement zone. Their engines howled to life within the simulation, cutting through the artificial atmosphere as targeting systems snapped online and threat indicators bloomed across each pilot's display.

There was no countdown. No warning.

The moment the final system synchronized, the exercise began, and the sky erupted into motion as pilots broke formation instinctively, each one carving their own path through the chaos, searching for advantage before someone else found it first.

Nixie Voidskipper Agethelos Kresten Alana Halak Ayven Kresten and anybody else from the FO that wants to join

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

The speech ended at the mark, and the holographs appeared, screaming through the simulation with breakneck speed. So it would be a battle over a simulated planet, thought Nix. There were a lot more calculations to make in an atmosphere. Only the most elite pilots could manage it and still retain accuracy. Wind foil, resistance, gravity, and obstacles were only the beginning. There was also ground fire, friendly fire, and even potential interference from fauna. More than one pilot had died with the guts of flying animals obscuring their view-port, or had their instruments clogged by a group of mynocks.

Nix leapt into motion, jumping into her simulated cockpit and strapping on her helmet with practiced efficiency. In an instant, her hands had found the controls and her craft rocketed forth. The foux cockpit jerked and moved, simulating the gravitational effects and rocketing her back into her seat. As the shielding closed above and she was zipping about within the battle-zone, her thumbs uncorked the firing controls and primed her weapons.

She checked the Torplex flight computer, then the T-sj1a targeting computer, followed by priming the dual SJFS L-s9.6 laser cannons, and checking her payload to see if any ion missiles or proton bombs had been loaded. Once she was satisfied, Nix pulled her TIE into the sky and executed a pin-point turn, zipping about to see if she could get the drop on one of the other TIE Starfighters with her twin cannons. Whap! Whap! Whapwhap! Barked the cannons, rapidly sending bursts of red laser-fire across the field. Targeting systems beeped, but Nix didn't need a lock to find a target.

Soon she had dropped down lower into the atmosphere, and was zipping close to the ground, seeking out her target with the planned single-mindedness of a predator.

Meanwhile, her radar beeped warnings about the swarms of fighters joining the fight. Nix took pot-shots for now. It would take a moment to find the weakest target.

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra did not wait for the final word to settle before she moved, her body already responding to the shift in the room as the simulation came alive around her. The cockpit sealed with a sharp hiss, and for a brief instant, there was nothing but the contained stillness of metal and interface before the world opened all at once into sky.

The transition pressed her back into the seat as the system fed her the weight of atmosphere, the drag, the subtle resistance that did not exist in a vacuum. Her hands settled onto the controls with quiet familiarity, not rushed, not searching, simply finding where they needed to be as her breathing steadied into something natural and unforced.

"Alright…" she murmured under her breath, more to center herself than anything else.

The display resolved around her in layers, targeting reticles aligning, velocity markers adjusting in real time as the environment stabilized into something that felt entirely real. It was heavier than space, more demanding, every correction carrying consequence, and she felt it immediately in the way the craft responded beneath her.

Most of the fighters surged upward as the engagement began, instinctively climbing into open space where movement was cleaner, and lines of sight were easier to maintain. Lyra did not follow them. Instead, she angled downward, letting her TIE slip beneath that initial wave of motion and into the denser air below, where the terrain began to matter.

The ground rose to meet her in uneven ridges and shifting elevation, forcing constant adjustment rather than clean, predictable vectors. It required attention in a different way, not discipline imposed from outside, but awareness that came from feeling the craft respond moment to moment.

Above her, the first volleys of fire began to cut across the sky, controlled bursts and measured engagement as pilots tested one another. She watched it only briefly, her focus drifting instead to the edges of the engagement where movement was less refined, where hesitation and overcorrection created openings that would not exist for long.

Her fingers shifted slightly against the controls as she rolled through a shallow arc, using the terrain to break her silhouette while her sensors traced fleeting signatures across her display. She did not rush the moment, allowing the pattern to form before acting, her attention narrowing as a fighter dipped lower than the others, not by design, but by adjustment.

"Too tight…" she said quietly, more observation than judgment.

When she moved, it was immediate but not abrupt; her TIE climbing just enough to clear a rise before rolling into position, her nose aligning with the projected path of the other craft rather than its current position. Her thumbs pressed into the firing controls, releasing a controlled burst of red fire that cut cleanly through the space ahead of her.

She did not linger to confirm the result.

Instead, she broke away just as quickly, letting the momentum carry her back down toward the terrain as her radar began to populate with more contacts flooding into the simulation. The engagement was expanding rapidly now, the sky filling with motion, with intent, with pilots beginning to settle into their own rhythms.

Lyra's pulse had picked up, but her focus remained steady, her expression calm as she adjusted her vector once more, choosing space not by where the fight was, but where it would be.

"No squads…no ranks…" she echoed softly, recalling the directive as it settled into something more tangible within the simulation.

A faint, almost thoughtful smile touched her lips as her hands guided the craft forward.

"Just flying."

And within the weight of atmosphere, the constant demand for adjustment, and the freedom to move without formation holding her in place, it felt closer to home than anything else she had experienced since arriving.

 

[Alana Halak]

ETERNAL TRIAL OF ACES
Hotshot - Chapter 1

TAG: Agethelos Kresten | Ayven Kresten | Lyra Ventor | Nixie Voidskipper | Open

OVERDRIVE
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ZAKUUL

Alana's lip curled as the simulation loaded the "Dogfight" parameters. She preferred the heavy impact of a bombing run; the definitive, bone-shaking thud of a target erased from the map, but she wasn't about to let a little thing like atmospheric dogfighting threaten her. In her mind, she was already an Ace; the simulation was just a slow-motion replay for the instructors' benefit.

<Crimson-3 checking in,> she said, her voice smooth and brimming with unearned arrogance. <Let's clear the board before the coffee gets cold.>

The simulation flared to life, and three TIE Fighters dropped out of a digital hyperspace jump. They were Academy Standard AI; predictable, stiff, and usually dead within seconds of engaging Alana. She slammed the throttles forward, ignoring the tactical formation her wingmen were trying to maintain.

She locked onto the lead TIE. Her HUD hummed, the diamond-shaped target reticle turning a solid, murderous red. She could see the telemetry: the TIE was pulling a standard banking turn. It was a textbook deflection shot.

"Watch and learn," she muttered to no one in particular.

She yanked the stick to the right, kicking the rudder pedals to drift her TIE into a perfect firing angle. She squeezed the trigger, expecting the satisfying bloom of a digital explosion.

Instead, the green bolts streaked harmlessly into the void.

In her eagerness to claim the first kill, Alana had over-rotated. She hadn't accounted for the simulated engine torque; a lapse in her concentration that saw her lasers miss the TIE by a humiliating margin. The AI didn't miss its chance; it snapped into a tight loop, reversing the engagement and putting Alana firmly in its crosshairs.

"What the…" Alana's eyes widened. She stared at the empty space where the explosion should have been. Her face burned red beneath the helmet. "The compensators are off!"

She didn't wait for a reply that wasn't coming. She threw the TIE into a desperate, violent roll as warning klaxons began to scream in the cockpit. The simulated TIE lasers hammered against her rear shields, the cockpit flickering with the orange glow of a critical warning.

<Crimson-3, breaking off!> she snapped into the comms, her voice now sharp with a mix of embarrassment and fury. <I'm resetting the engagement. Get these bugs off my tail! This rig is glitching!>

She hadn't just missed; she'd made herself the prey. And in front of the rest of the Starfighter Corps, that was a mistake she intended to bury under a pile of simulated scrap as soon as she got her hands back on the stick.
​

Spoiler: D20 ROLL

1

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Nixie found it, and fired again, BRAP BRAP BRAPBRAPBRAP coursing blaster-bolts one after the other at her target, it weaved and dodged like a real pilot - not like the targets she usually faced in a simulation, but she kept firing, blasting tirelessly. Her cockpit hummed with energy and she hummed with excitement, inside and out. She realized as she released the firing controls, that she was humming the Imperial March. Ironically, the song of a dead Empire now. Once she realized it, she hummed louder... and louder... until it was the loudest sound in her cockpit.

Then she jerked her flight controls and released a volley of blasterfire again, this time intent on finishing her target. She timed it so that she could bank away and find cover again. The windfoil and the obstacles of planetary atmospheric battle could be both the best and the worst thing about dogfighting in this environment. Meanwhile her brain was rattling calculations, both geometric and trigonometry, assuring that her bolts would travel the correct course to intercepting their targets.

The other key was anticipating your target. You didn't want to fire where they are, nor where they're going, but rather where they would be. It took psychic-like prediction to be sure that you would hit your mark. Which was why you didn't want to release fire until you knew, or until you wanted to force them into a position. She turned her guns to where her bolts would scream past. A pilot with less discipline would pull away from them.. and so Nixie said "There," in a whisper and let loose BRAPBRAPBRAPBRAP against her target

Lyra Ventor Agethelos Kresten Alana Halak Ayven Kresten