fandomhigh | Flight & Flying [Friday, June 8, 2nd period]

Anakin was leaning against the reconfigured flight simulator when the flight students arrived, absolutely no trace of an smile--or any emotion at all, really--on his face.

"The first battle in my home galaxy in a conflict that eventually became known as the Clone Wars," he said, walking over to the television from his room and pushing a few buttons. A three-dimension projection of a world rotated in front of them, "took place on a world called Naboo." He was very proud of the way his voice didn't shake. "Today we're going to complete an entire military mission. Naboo was being slowly starved to death by a blockade set up by the Trade Federation's control ships and its army of droids." His expression hardened. "Though we didn't know it at the time, the Senator of this planet was using his home as bait to set himself up as Chancellor and gain power over the Republic. We won the battle, but lost the war."

Anakin gestured to the projection. "Working in pairs, your job will be to take off from the planet's surface, fight past the enemy's droid fighters and destroy the control ship." On the projection, the target glowed red. "The only way to destroy the ship is to blow it from the inside--its shields are too powerful for the starfighter's torpedoes to take out from space." He put his hands behind his back and paced. "You're up against a deadline as well. On the surface there's a battle taking place: your people--including the fourteen-year-old queen of the planet--against a droid army that doesn't get tired." He turned away before a profile shot of the leader in question came up on the projector. "Taking out the control ship also powers down those droids. Take too long to blow it up and you won't have a reason to go back to the planet: the enemy will have won through battle what they had been trying to achieve through blockade."

He pointed at the simulator. "You'll be flying the Naboo N-1 Starfighter," he said. "They're a little more sensitive than the F-16 from last week, and more elegant than the X-Wing, but without the engine power. And remember that once you break atmosphere, you won't be fighting gravity any longer so you don't have to yank on the controls quite as hard. The droid starfighters are faster than you are--and there are a lot of them--but they're also fairly stupid. Watch for them and the laser cannons on the control ship--and watch for each other--and you'll do fine.

"This battle was real. This exercise can be accomplished. I will not accept failure from any of you on this." He tossed two deeply silly-looking helmets into the flight simulator. "These helmets are equipped with comm units that will allow you to talk to each other."

He waved them towards the simulator. "Begin."

All That I Am - Rob Thomas

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"Aw, frak . . ." Anders pulled his finger off the trigger button immediately, leaving himself vulnerable for the second or two he took to scan his sensor board for friendlies.

He at least remembered to keep moving while he did it, although his efforts at evasive maneuvers were clumsy at best and haphazard at worst, being the result of some random and injudicious twitching at the stick.

"Random is good," Anakin said, "it confuses the droids. Random with a plan other than 'please, please, I don't want to die,' is much better. Work on that second part."

Okay, so keeping up the random part was fine; injudicious, not so much.

Anders was a little surprised to see that he hadn't been hit while he'd been checking his board, but he wasn't complaining. A quick visual scan through the canopy helped give him a better sense of his surroundings, and he took a deep breath.

"Okay, Sammy-boy," he said to himself, not sure why he was reverting to his dad's nickname for him, "you can do this. Not too different from dodging the defense to make the shot, right?"

Maybe if he thought of the battle zone as the Pyramid court, and his goal as -- well, the goal, it wouldn't be that intimidating. Juking the fighter like he was head-faking, he kicked in the thrusters and started toward the control ship. He thought he had a good idea in making the approach like he was taking a run for the Pyramid goal, but he hadn't yet remembered that he had a lot more directional flexibility in space, and his approach, while zig-zagging, was more or less flat.

"Look above and below," Anakin barked. "This is space, not a field."

Anders had the right idea, though. The droid ships, programmed to always find the most direct path somewhere, were confused by his tactics.

And somehow, that made it a little easier; he was used to competing against humans who trained to anticipate the sort of maneuvers he was trying. Granted, they weren't quite as fast as the droids, so he hoped his reflexes were up to it.

"What the hell," he muttered, and pulled at the stick to send his fighter into a brief dive as he swerved to port. The move brought a droid ship right into his line of sight, and hoping his hand-eye coordination wasn't thrown off too badly by the unfamiliar circumstances, he fired off a few bursts of laser fire toward it.

The ship blew up in a shower of sparks. "One down," Anakin commented. "Three hundred or so to go."

Greeeeeeat. Deciding he'd rather get to his goal in time than wipe all the hostile blips off the board, Anders saved the mental pat on the back until later, gave the thrusters a little more juice, and continued his erratic course toward the control ship.

He still wasn't making complete use of his field of maneuverability, although he was trying, and he'd managed to steady himself enough that he only wobbled a little bit in flight. He wasn't used to his opponents firing back, though, and his evasive maneuvers, while effective so far, were losing him valuable time.

Anakin was noticing. "Your people on the ground are getting slaughtered, Anders," he commented. "Move your ass."

Swearing under his breath, Anders put all the juice he could into the thrusters, snapping off bursts of laser fire at any droid ships in his flight path as he continued toward the control ship with less fancy (so to speak) maneuvering. Doing this solo ~~no pun intended~~ with no one to cover the ass that he was attempting to move as directed kind of sucked.

Except he kind of forgot that the control ship had guns too . . . until the quad turbolasers tagged him.

Anakin hissed in an unhappy breath as Anders' ship exploded.

"That didn't work," he said bitterly. "Get a few more ~~handwavey~~ runs in before trying it with a partner."

"No frakking kidding it didn't work." Anders sighed and reset everything to take a few more ~~handwavey like whoa~~ practice runs. By the time he finally succeeded in taking out the control ship, (which involved him finally remembering he had proton torpedoes) nearly half the planet was dead.

Flight & Flying [Friday, June 8, 2nd period]

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