The Sunny Islands of Hakawa [Maverick Saga]

Trust a Corellian to leave her alone in a dogfight! The Interdictor had come as a surprise, coming out of hyperspace in a flash of grey. It had all gone to the Akks then. The original plan was simple, take out that convoy. There were a few TIEs with it, she'd been the first to score a kill on one. That'd probably served to just make her reckless. Okay maybe not 'probably', it had definitely made her reckless. She'd been chasing a TIE when the Interdictor came out of hyperspace. Her last volley had clipped its wing, she'd 'wooped' as it spiralled out of control and exploded violently.

Then it was her turn. "What the-" she cried out, Rusty wheezed away in the background - Two TIEs were coming in from above, they had the advantage on her. They'd rallied with the arrival of the Interdictor, and now she was all alone. The squad comms screamed to life, more curses than a Corellian port-cantina. Bell was alone, the Interdictor had jumped in close to her position and everybody else had scrambled to get distance from it. "Rusty, can we Hype out of here?!" A sad woo from the old Droid told her that wasn't going to be an option... In this state, they couldn't escape. The Squadron was scattered, all tactics had gone out of the airlock, they were as good as dead.

Time to do what Talusians did best. She was faster than the TIEs, hopefully she'd be faster than the Interdictor's turbolasers. She looped around, span and dropped - performing just enough dizzying feats to keep the TIEs at a distance and guessing where she was going next. She had to buy herself some time, enough time for the Interdictor's TIEs to give her enough space. To follow the rest of Maverick... Just... A little more...

She put her foot down, all power that wasn't currently on shields straight into the engines. Green blaster bolts started to fly by, Turbolasers taking shots at her. She banked, dropping low to use the ship's mass as a cover. The ship got closer, close enough for her to start firing herself. Her red bolts dissipated on its shields, rippling uselessly across the invisible barrier. She focused on a nearby turbolaser, firing shot after shot until Rusty buzzed the shield was weakened enough - she let loose a Proton Torpedo. The explosion was beautiful, fire broke out throughout the tower. She cheered, although it didn't last long - she needed to focus on evading the turbolasers. She had one aim, the four large Grav well projectors. She'd hate to admit it, but she doubted her ability to actually suceed in this plan - but she had to try.

She strafed along the ship, using its own hull as cover. The two TIEs behind her kept shooting, but the distance made them inaccurate. She'd have no hope of destroying all four on her own, she didn't even know if she had enough Protons for that - but 'odds' were just something else to prove wrong. She got close to the first, and all three of her laser cannons lit up. The Interdiction field was up, so Bella knew the ship's reactors were being used up - its defenses were weak. This is why you don't bring an Interdictor in alone.

She popped out two Protons. One blasted hopelessly against the shields, the second hit the hull and broke through. It wasn't as glorious an explosion as she'd hoped, but hopefully it had caused some sort of damage - she'd need a volley to make sure, but she couldn't do that on her own.

She rose up, span around and went for a second strike. Alerted wooping made her look back to her sensors, several TIEs had broke off to her assault. She tried again to repeat her attack run, dodging the Turbolasers and striking at the shield - she managed to break another Proton Torpedo into the second Grav Well when the TIEs were on her. Stuck against the hull, she had little maneuvering room. They started firing, bolt after bolt hit her shields, then her armour - she closed her eyes.

Panting and sweating, she woke up back in the simulation pod. Someone tried to help her out, but she exploded into an angry tirade before his hands even got close. "What was that!?!" She jumped out of the pod, rubbing down her clothes. She looked at the other pods, most of the Squadron was still in their pods. She roared her frustation and stormed off out of the room. Several technicians watching from above shook their heads - until she stormed up to them herself. "You call that an E-Wing? I think you need to seriously look at your simulation! E-Wings have much more maneuverability than that!!"

The technician, a Mon Cal, raised a Datapad to his chest - as if that would protect him! "B-But Miss, that is what a real E-wing feels like, the simulation is flawle-"

"Flawed! You're right! Start working on it!"

---

She was sat outside in the sunlight not soon after. It was funny, simulations of space might have thousands of starts in the sky - but the real thing was always so much better up close. She was lay out on a lounger, both arms under her head. She'd chosen to wear some shorts and a cropped tank top - anything to expose as much skin as she can to the Sun's rays. Anything to absorb it all before she'd be back in space, where the rays were less enjoyable and far more radioactively deadly.

She'd zoned out for quite awhile, almot dozed off, when the constant droning of nearby pilots in conversation brought her back. She looked over and almost fell over into the sand when she tried to get up too quickly. "You-!" she blurted out. Scrambling back upright she stormed over, kicking sand up behind her. "You son-of-a-Nerf! What happened to 'team-work'? Have my back he says, then five minutes into the flight you bounce out and start chasing TIEs! Eeeur I could punch you right in your face, Perseval Tralp!"

She'd met him, not five weeks ago, when she'd first arrived on Dac. Officially put as Maverick-Three, he was her wingman - her Four. A terrible one at that, clearly! Probably because it was in his blood! She'd not spoken to him nearly as much as she should, and the few times they had it usually ended in raised voices. Just your average meeting between a Corellian and a Talusian, really. It wasn't harmful, to either of them - it might make the rest of their squad a bit uneasy though. "Trust a Corellian to abandon you when you need them!"

Even as Erin was just beginning to smile at the younger man's words of encouragement about home, she couldn't help but thing, 'Well, this seems like a perfectly peaceful conversation.' He really was a good-natured kid and she really did hope that she was able to keep him safe; this was rough work and it would be hard to survive. But of course, all good things must come to an end.

She'd taken note of the hostile Talusian pretty early on, not because of her attitude per se, but because of how it translated into the simulator. She was almost psychotically aggressive and more than a little reckless in her actions. Heh, she'd be perfect for Interceptor duty. Erin, for her part, winced and promptly laid her head down with exasperation as the two began to go at it. To Trelp's credit, he started off pretty fair to her, though then again she was his immediate 'superior' so it wasn't like he had much choice. But then things started to get out of hand... well out of hand from within the bounds of the average personal rivalries amongst pilots. For those from the home sector, this was pretty much an average meeting. Scratch that, it was a rare meeting: nobody had gotten hit yet.

Biting her lip to keep herself from laughing at the banter, Erin looked back up at the two and them and straightened up, not bothering to even get up from her seat. "It takes two to abandon, Tarrn," she chastised lightly, the thinnest of barely restrained smiles on her lips, "If you thought he was getting away, you should've attempted to wrangle him, or followed depending. I have plenty of criticisms I could shoot at both of you for your flying, but there's something much more stressing I need to point out." And then, just like that all semblance of joy was gone and she was on her feet, both of her hands behind her back as she approached the feuding pair. "Were you under my direct command, I would see you placed below Trelp after your little show towards that Mon Cal," she stated, no anger in her voice, just sheer steely sternness, almost like a disappointed father/mother actually, "You blamed a simulation programmer for your failure in a ship which was already specially gifted to you. You can't blame others for your mistakes. And if you want a ship that's more maneuverable, leave the squadron and grab an A-wing. Because otherwise you will always be out-turned by a TIE. Always." And she wasn't joking about the demotion thing--this woman had every right to at least be mad at Trelp, or at least it was somewhat justifiable. But that Mon Cal did everything right and she'd tested the sims--they were spot on.

Perseval grit his teeth together at her initial response, not even hearing Erin approach from behind him. He shot out one last retort before noticing her. "I agree! Had we not scattered, we could have easily killed the damn thing!"

He then stopped, blinking as he realized that him and his wingmate..were in agreement about something. 'Wait..what..?' He looked very confused after he said that. For a moment, he tried to consider what he had just said, as if it was some large revelation that the two of them could agree about something beyond the vague and blurry line of 'Imps are bad, let's blast them'. That slipped away when Erin began to speak, lecturing her. At first, he wanted to smile in success. She was the one being scolded for something, 'Serves her right for everytime she yelled at me after sims when it didn't go her way..not my fault she can't handle not being the very best, now is it?' He smirked a bit at her, slipping his hands behind his back as she was forced to concede that Erin was correct. He managed to restrain it when she began to apologize to him, and he took a moment to look around, as if wanting to ascertain that everything that was occurring was real. She was now -apologizing- to him. Of all the things in the galaxy.

However, he did not expect what he saw when he glanced around.

Infact, he turned redder when he realized they had drawn a crowd in the form of their squadron. Almost all the other pilots wore amused expressions at their suffering as Erin spoke. He coughed a bit into his elbow, and stuck out his hand to her quickly. "Apology accepted Bel. Congratulations on nabbing three in the sims today. Looks like we both lived up to our callsigns, eh?" He managed to flash her that grin, but a quick dart of his eyes in the direction of their squadmates would hopefully get her to realize that they had drawn spectators. "I'm.." He managed to keep smiling despite gritting his teeth, "Sorry as well. I didn't mean to allow us to become separated."

There was a ripple of laughter in the crowd, and one of the crewmen from the Wraith actually spoke up, "Kriffing Corellians, can't even start a good fight with eachother, huh?" It brought more laughter as the crowd began to disperse and return to their activities on the beach. Perseval's eye twitched. The comment had nearly brought his temper back to the forefront, and it looked like he might actually explode on the poor crewman if Erin didn't get him and Bel distracted.

Bel hadn't noticed the eyes of the crowd turning towards them, the silence that came with expecting a good fight. But when Pers flushed a shade of Zabrak, she glanced around herself. As if apologising to Pers wasn't bad enough, now she'd apologised in front of enough people for it to pass on to everyone on the island - and beyond. She flushed red, throwing a frown in the direction of the crewman who insulted her ability to fight. If he wasn't so anonymous in the crowd, she'd show him how people from the Corellian System settled insults like that!

They wandered off (rightly so!) and Bella turned back to Pers and Erin. She actually cracked a smile at Erin's insultive joke, her general demeanor relaxing. She rolled her eyes at the lecturing, Bella knew it was a bad idea to put her and Pers together but somebody did - she had to prove the doubters, like Erin, wrong. She could break Pers eventually, and sometimes they did work together quite well. She couldn't help but put on a smug smile when Erin commented on her assault of the Interdictor. Of course it was foolhardy, but if just four fighters had pulled off and done what she had - the rest could've Hyped out and survived the engagement! But... Maybe she should have at least told the others of her plan, they might have rallied around it. Hopefully, she'd never need to.

She sighed, folding her arms across each other, "Well I guess that's what we're here for, push ourselves to breaking point so we're forced to work together." She said the last words with a grin directed at Pers, "Even if I have to work alongside a no-good Corellian Spacer, it's better him than an Eyeball or a Squint." She relaxed her arms, letting them drop by her side. "Truth be told we messed up today, all of us. We didn't stick as a squadron, didn't communicate with each other - it doesn't matter how good you are as a pilot if you're outnumbered, outgunned and alone. Maybe it'd be good to stage some of those legitimate fights. Bring people together, get them riled up, make some bonds. Plus these layabouts need to learn how to look after themselves on the ground, they won't always have KX9s to hide behind..."

The rest of the beach had calmed down from the not-so-punch-up and had gone back to milling about their activities. The slingball game had finally started up and there was already someone on the ground, struggling to get up out of the sand. No blood, yet, she noted.

Truthfully, Erin wasn't even trying to lecture them, just trying to bolster their spirits. Perhaps she was a little too used to being the queen of the hangar (as opposed to being a hangar queen) and needed to start checking herself on her mannerisms. This wasn't her squadron, not this time. Still, the reaction was what it needed to be, and to her delight it seemed that the kids had taken to her ideas. At least reasonably well. Bel was still the same stubborn-minded woman that Erin feared would lead to issues in the squadron and it seemed that Pers had taken her comment as he'd never get shot-down head-on, when that was far from true against certain enemies. But they both knew that they needed to cooperate and saw the effect of what happens when teamwork is abandoned in favor of just doing your own thing. That was enough for now.

Still, she'd definitely give Bel an approving smile at her assessment of the fighting idea--practically dead-on as to why she'd been taught to do that in the first place. And the light teasing even managed to get her to smile, glad to hear that they were attempting to patch up their relationship. "I don't think we've talked more than an hour out of sims without it involving us yelling at each other in our quarters." (Sounds like the average marriage,) she added to herself, barely biting back saying it aloud.

When offered to join them, she shrugged and took a seat, commenting with a smirk, "May as well. Should be fun to watch." (And somebody needs to play referee with you two.) Letting out a big yawn and stretching, she leaned over on the table and turned her head to watch the game, chuckling occasionally as someone went down. Today the squadron could relax, let them get comfortable with each other's presence. But tomorrow things got serious, and she had the distinct impression that both she and the commander would have as much work to do as the kids. Good. She didn't want to get complacent.

Perseval returned that toothy Corellian grin towards Bel, "If I agreed with you on principle, your head would get too large for the cockpit and you'd be given a medical discharge." He retorted, only semi-teasing, shaking his own head quickly. "As it is, I'm doing you a service by being so disagreeable." He turned back to the slingball game to observe as their squadron mates dived about in the sand to knock the ball back and forth, attempting to score points on eachother. "Yanno, one day Bel, you and I should join these amateurs and show them how the Corellian sector plays." The idea brought a smirk to his face, and he brushed some of his sandy straw hair to the side, kicking back to relax now that the yelling had finally been settled.

At least for now.

And so it was. The rest of the day was relatively quiet, and eventually the slingball game wound down. As darkness began to fall over the Islands, the recall was sounded for personnel to return to their quarters. Perseval had said his farewells to Erin, and walked back with Bel. The two managed to not rip into eachother that night over what they insisted was the others snoring habit while they slept, and the next morning the pilots had all awoken refreshed and rejuvenated, eager to see what their Commander had in store for them for the day.

Or at least, that would have been the picturesque version of it. While there was a level of excitement, a great majority of the Squadron was downright terrified of what the old man had planned. That fear was alleviated somewhat when Vesil had elaborated on his plans, standing in front of them in the briefing room as he pointed at the map of the islands.

"Today, Mavericks, you'll be conducting a training exercise against Endurance Squadron and their Y-Wings. We all tend to laugh at the Y-Wings for their speed, or lack of thereof. So today pilots, I want you to put your credits where your mouths are. You're going to be fighting against a squadron of disciplined pilots, that know how to work together as a team, and know they're slower. Blaster cannons will be set on training settings to provide only damage indications on the screen. When the text scrolls across your screen saying 'you are dead', you are dead. Anyone who attempts to continue fighting after being shot down will be dismissed from the days drill, and automatically be scored at zero. Furthermore, I will not be accompanying you on this mission. I'll be working ground control with Captain Orion and Miss Erin. Any questions? No? Good. Get to your X-Wings."

Just like that, the squadron had been let loose. Strapping on their gear and other equipment, the pilots of Maverick had taken off in their X-Wings. The fear had been quashed, none of them doubted their chances of success over a single squadron of Y-Wings. They had assumed their formation quickly, the voice of their Rodian XO talking to them over the comms as he lead them through, showing off a bit to the spectators on the ground. A few of the army soldiers on the Island stopped to cheer as the X-Wings roared overhead, not that the pilots could hear it. There was, however, a sense of confidence that the pilots felt radiating from them.

All except Perseval, who felt an uneasy weight in his gut.

Perseval caught himself accelerating past Bel, on accident. He had not meant to, and he quickly rectified the situation by cutting back on his thrust a bit to take his proper position in the formation beside her. He waved at her from his cockpit, hesitating for a moment as he considered whether or not he should voice his concerns. After the moment passed, he grunted and then opened a private comms link with her.

"I'm not the only one who doesn't trust what Commander Vesil was saying right? There's got to be more to this..something like the Interdictor from the Sims. We'd butcher a single squadron of Y-Wings, right? They're too slow, their armor isn't good, and their shields are as reliable as a Hutts word. So what's the catch? Secret A-Wing squadron snatching us from behind? Imperial invasion? Ban on ryshcate when we land?" He waggled his wings slightly at her as he finished his transmission, squinting against the sunlight that made it difficult for the pilots of Maverick Squadron to see.

It was an early morning. Bel wasn't one for sleeping in late, she'd even say she was a light sleeper. So when Pers decided to snore like a Rancor with three blocked nostrils, Bel just decided to give up on the attempt. She jumped out of bed and got suited pretty sharpish, shoving her hair untidily into a bun. It didn't take her long, then Pers rose from his grave too.

A real flight this morning, which was always fun. This was what she was here for (although the sun, sea and sand would be a pretty good reason, if she knew this was part of the deal) flying ships for the glorious Republic. She didn't understand though, when their illustrious leader gave them the outline of today's exercise, why they were up against Wishbones. What sort of fight could a Y-Wing put up to anything that wasn't a flying orb.

Rusty was already in an X-wing by the time they arrived, seemingly.. Asleep. "Hey nuts and bolts." Bel said as she stepped up to the cockpit. "Rusty!" She shouted under her breath as she tapped the old boy on his head. He whirred to life with one of his characteristic 'wooooo's'. "I don't care if I took all day to get here, don't go napping while we're up there okay? I don't want to be low on the boards today!"

He woo'd again, followed by a high pitch beep, and Bel jumped into her seat. "Yeah, yeah. Show on the hyperlane." She shoved her bun unceremoniously into her helmet and the world around her went silent. Apart from the damn droid, and the few chrrks of communication lines being hit over someone's head (by the sound of it). She awaited her turn, and when the ground crew gave her the go - her, Rusty and the thin layer of tin and glass between her and the vast, empty, cold, (mostly) lifeless expanse of space - shot off after the rest of Maverick Squadron.

Pers wasn't far behind, she noted when he jumped in front of her. She held a hand up to the rear of his X-Wing, an insulting gesture on her fingers that she was sure only his tin can spotted. When Pers suddenly dropped back to fall in line, her hand quickly turned back into a tight happy-go-lucky wave back at him. She shot her head back forwards at the request for a private comms.

You know, you don't punch a Corellian once and suddenly you're best friends. Who have each other on speed call and sleep together. She shuddered, oh that thought sounded a bit wrong. She didn't mean it that way. At least that was her inner voice, unless he was a Jedi at least he didn't hear how bad that sounded. "What can ah do for you Persy?", she opened the channel with.

He started moaning about his feelings to her, and she just looked ahead as sky became space and space became more space as far as the eye could see. She looked back as he finished, mostly to get the sun out of her eyes. His wing waggling made her smile, adding a lightness to her tone as she replied. "Well of course, Pers. Y-Wings wouldn't stand a chance. I think the Interdictor yesterday was a lesson in 'not every engagement is textbook'." She paused looking ahead as Maverick Squadron begun a tight turn in formation towards their objective. "I just hope," she continued, "that this isn't a lesson about 'Bombers are always defended by a capital ship'. I'm not even sure Turbolasers have a safety option."

She looked down at her display, and let out a sigh down the private comms. "You know, Pers. I feel a little empty inside without Proton Torpedoes in my life."