Chapter 2
Assignment Orders
Revision #1,052
Issue Date 13:23 7/23/255,555 GY
Name: Tali Fendraya Rank: SR Cadet
Age: 16. Race:Frayin. Homeworld: Acorea.
Hair: Long Dark Brown. Fur: Golden Brown. Eyes: Emerald Green.
Skin: Tanned. Height: 5ft, 1/8in weight: 92lb
DOB: 6/02/255,539 GY
Parents
Father: Hondor. Mother: Reshel Fendraya
Mirin: Thena Velez, Senay Fila, Rele Fendraya
Siblings Mali, Kali. {expand list}
Sr. Cadet Tali is hereby assigned to the newly formed Training Squadron aboard Taurus Station, Section one twenty-six A,Terra, Sol System for the purpose of practical experience and training. This Squadron has been awarded the callsign of FOX and shall hereafter be referred to as Fox Squadron.
SR Cadet Tali is hereby transferred from the large ship piloting program to the fighter pilot program effective immediately. Transfer is compulsory and all request for reversal shall be denied effective Revision #923 {linked revision}
Standing Orders
Fox Squadron's duties shall include, but not be limited to, the training of both Imperial and Terran Federation Cadets as well as act as the designated Liaison Squadron and shall handle all disputes and conflicts between the residents of Taurus Station, Section one twenty-six B, the local populus, and Imperial citizens.
SR Cadet Tali is ordered to report to deck 3 compartment 237 aboard the Aurora by 16:23 7/23/255,555 GY. ALL requests for transfers or reassignments shall be Denied!
She was completely at a loss. Tali hadn’t had much contact with boys throughout her life. Her homeworld was a relatively recent colony world that hadn't quite reached population stability so her experience with males was limited to her younger brother and a single teacher at the academy. Otherwise she generally avoided them, which wasn't exactly hard to do with the population difference being what it was. Though this wasn't something she would be able to continue doing. Not with at least four members of the squadron being male.
Though it was still quite a shock to have one said male walk in on her in the showers. The strange girl Tiara hadn’t helped either. Dragging her off to brush her tail and fur with the boy still there like that had only made it worse and she had been suspiciously good at it as well. In the end she had ended up flushed almost as scarlet as the boy’s hair. It was embarrassing and made worse when she left the showers as Amara and Elvira had actually been sitting at the door listening to what was going on inside. The two girls immediately looked at each other before launching into a stream of questions. That came so quickly that she couldn’t even keep track of half of them let alone answer them.
Taking advantage of the two finally needing to breathe she finally managed to ask. “Umm what are you two talking about?”
“Wait don't you know who that was?” Amara excitedly asked. Tali just gave her a sideways look to indicate that she didn't have a clue as to what the taller girls were talking about. “Tali! That was Prince Micheal Orizeky!” she exclaimed
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It took her a moment to process this. “Oh” she said rather bewildered before doing what any commoner girl from a remote agro world would do in such a situation. She fainted.
When she finally came to she was laying in her bunk Tiara was currently lay in her bunk.
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Tali pulled the stick back hard as her fighter's shields flared from the two beams of energy The Lieutenant's fighter raked across them. The inertial dampeners In her ship whined all throughout the sharp climb. Before the dampeners could adjust to the new orientation she threw the throttle control all the way to max and burned hard to get some distance from her opponent. She couldn't help but wish that she was back in the bunk room still unconscious on the couch, instead of in a simulator having an eight on one dogfight with the literal best pilot in the empire. She quickly recycled the shields as Eric’s voice came over the comms.
“ Redirect to point 1,7,5,3” hearing this she quickly adjusted her heading. Eric’s fighter was heading straight towards her at full speed. With a flick of a switch she disabled the flight assist allowing the fighter to maintain speed towards Eric as she turned the long nose of hers around to face the direction she had just come from. The turn finished just in time for her to see the Lieutenant launch a couple of missiles at her. Without even thinking she pulled the trigger, two thin ornge beams of energy fired out from the wing tip mounted phaser cannons hitting the missiles before they could reach her. Even before the explosions dissipated she toggled her weapons and sent a burst of fire from her nose gun into the Lieutenant's shields.
As soon as the glow of Eric’s engines entered her view Tali threw the throttle back to full power and toggled the flight assist propelling her fighter forward. The overpowered magnetic field on the two fighters pulled at each other quickly bringing her up to the same speed as Eric. Two anti fighter missiles fired out of the small ports on the main hull of Eric’s ship. They both followed this up with a steady stream of phaser fire. Only for the Lieutenant to snap shot the missiles and subsequently tank and dodge the phaser beams.
“Eric evasive action! NOW!” Tali screamed into her com unit as she performed a change in direction that would have torn any Imperial ship in half. Even still the entire fighter winned in protest at the hard turn. For a moment she thought the inertial dampeners would actually fail as the G forces pushed her down into her seat. From there she could look up to watch the Lieutenant perform an equally impossible turn while putting three shots from his nose cannon into the bottom of Eric’s fighter, causing it to turn into a brillant fireball. With that Tali found herself running from the Lieutenant again.
All Six engines on Talis' fighter flared as she threw all available power into them. Periodically her shields would shimmer as she took some long range fire from behind her. After the fifth shot hit her shields she reorientated the magnetic field and recharged the shields. Finishing just in time for the next volley to disrupt them again. She could only watch as the shield display showed that the shields were not quite fully recharging to full in between volleys. It was only a matter of time before he got her through simple attrition. She was just about ready to give up when the fighter's main computer beeped to inform her it had just finished its calculations.
The sudden deceleration and turn happened so quickly that the Lieutenant didn’t even manage to rack her with fire before he blew past her. It would have been a great opportunity if She hadn’t needed to divert all her weapon power into the thrusters to perform the maneuver. The race was on though. All she had to do was get into comms range with the four cripled fighter she and Eric had been protecting. Looking forward she could see them. Five thousand kilometers out. She could tell that The Lieutenant had figured out what she was doing as he was running parallel with her heading for the other. The power core whirling behind her as she pushed it to it’s absolute limit.
The Lieutenant reached missile range just before she reached comms range. The missiles streaked towards the four fighters as she sent the calculations and instructions on what to do. At the same time she grabbed the red knob behind the throttle and pushed it all the way forward. Somehow the power core seemed to hum and whirl even louder. She had just enough time to watch the four fighters blink out of existence just before the missiles reached them as she drew the throttle back and slammed to max. Causing the view outside the cockpit to immediately go black.
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The simulator's cockpit slid open revealing Tali’s lithe form laying back with her eyes closed in the flight chair. As other Cadets began bombarding her with questions, Michale took a moment to look back at the twords where the tech for the simulator room was currently yelling at the Lieutenant. Apparently they were arguing about whatever it was that had crashed the simulator system. If what little he could overhear was true it had caused cascading failures throughout the ship's main computer, forcing it to drop out of Trans-space. So it didn't seem like he was going to get an answer from them so he decided to join the group around Tali hoping that she might have some idea as to what had happened.
When he slipped into the group crowding around her, he could see she was holding out a datapad. It was the same pad that every member of Fox Squadron had been given to study during the ten minutes they were waiting to use the sims. On the pad was the flight manual for the fighters they had used in the simulators; it was currently open to the standard equipment page. At first he wasn't sure why she was showing them they had all at the very least skimmed this section looking for the ships defense and drives, but there wasn't anything really crazy on the list, they would have noticed if it did. So it was amazing just how stupid the highlighted words made him feel.There clear as day was the words Spatial Field Emitters.
“HOW BY THE GREAT SPIRITS DOES A FIGHTER HAVE A TRANS-SPACE DRIVE!” Michale shouted.
Everyone in the room stood in shocked silence, even the tech and The Lieutenant had fallen silent. Somehow now that it was spoken out loud it didn't seem real. In fact this had even been the reason the computers had crashed. Nothing in their programming could allow them to accept such a small ship to be capable of jumping to Trans-space on their own. It should be impossible.
“Not impossible, just highly improbable” the smooth female voice that had just responded to what they had all just been thinking suddenly spoke out causing them all to jump. Michale quickly turned around to see that the source of the voice was a strange Frayinoid figure being projected from the small hollow emitter up in the sim’s control center.
“Now let me introduce myself. I am Nayomi and I will be Fox Squadrons tactical support AI.” We all stood in silence at this declaration. At this point one thing was certain this would not be a standard assignment.