The Sword and the Shield (Aegis Fighter Pilots)

Shenhua was excited. There were no two ways around it; she never used to be this way. She could not deny it though, there was something about this station that screamed excitement. She had been given almost no details on what her outfit was up to, it was all very hush hush. She had just arrived on The Aegis only a few minutes ago, and they already had to report to the hangar. Apparently her new squadron leader was a 'Balls to the wall' type of guy.

Shen hadn't talked to anyone yet, she sensed a few others around the hangar, but that was about it. As she waited, she ran a checklist through her mind, making sure she was all ready to go. As she did this, she felt a quick pang in the Force. It was fleeting but it was something she had not felt in quite a while.

As her commanding officer entered the hangar, all her questions were suddenly answered. She didn't think she would ever 'see' him again but there he was. She couldn't help but smile as he began ask for a quick roll call.

"Lieutenant Shenhua Noriega reporting for duty SIR!" she said coming to attention and pulling off a crisp salute. She emphasized the sir heavily and enthusiastically.

Shen hadn't had many things to be happy about lately, but maybe her luck was changing. It looks like this station was going to be a whole lot more fun then she expected.

Crassus was going through the list with some excitement, not that he would ever outwardly show it, but these pilots were the best of the best of the best. He almost wrote Shen’s rank and full name down before he stopped himself, Lieutenant Shenhua Noriega. He kept his head locked in the same position but allowed his eyes to peer over the clipboard at the Miraluka that stood before him. He allowed his stoic expression to be broken by a slight smile and his detached voice faltered to a friendlier one.

“Lieutenant, I do believe that I owe you a lunch or four after hours.”

Shen was the only reason that he was standing here today and not food for the carrion birds. Crass’ face almost instantly went into the unemotional expression that he met the squadron with. He wouldn’t act like this towards them all the time, after a few weeks he would relax… but for now he needed to send a message: Discipline.

“Once you all pick your quarters and settle in, get in your flight suits, and report back here. I just received clearance from the Kuat Drive yards to run a training session with the new fighters we will be flying.”

Oh how Crass hated acting all stoic and detached… it wasn’t him. He was easily one of the most fun loving and happy men that one would meet. He honestly couldn’t help it, he was a Zeltron, it was hard for him to act emotionally detached when his race was so sensitive to the emotions of those around him. Crass had always been even keener on the emotions of others then his peers… even his sister.

“This, is the XSF-47 “Venom” Strike fighter. It is easily one of the best multi-role starfighters out there.”

He paused for a few seconds, picking Shenhua and 5 other people at random.

“You six are force one. The others are force two with me. We are going to take a few minutes to familiarize ourselves with the controls then do a little force on force dog fight.”

Crass had many reasons for this, first and foremost was to find out who had skills that kills and who where the pukes. Second was to see if Shenhua had what it took to be his squadron XO incase something happened to him. Before he released everyone to their fighters he asked one more thing.

“Any questions?”

Shen thought that Crassus was acting slightly weird, he was being way too stiff.

He must be so uncomfortable right now she thought as she stifled a laugh.

Shenhua turned to look at the Venom, what she saw would be different from the others. Her vision came from the Force, the closest comparison she could make was to how sonar worked.

We will be together soon... her thoughts directed toward the Venom. Anyone who knew pilots, knew that it was common practice for them to talk to their ships. She snapped of a quick salute and made her way out of the hangar and towards the living quarters. She quickly found a room and tossed her gear in, and quickly began to suit up. She didn't want to waste anytime, she wanted to be flying now.

After she suited up, she made her way back to the hangar and reported in. She had picked out which Venom she wanted as soon as she arrived. Just as a padawan picked their Master, so did a fighter pick its pilot. She walked over to the fighter, and slipped into the cockpit smoothly.

The Viper and the Venom....we should get along just fine she mused.

"Hey Commander! When we going to get this show on the road eh?!" she shouted out to Crassus eliciting a few hoots of approval for some of the other pilots.

((Wow, sorry, I didn't mean to make this post this long....))

Crass allowed a smile to break through his little facade as Shen shouted. However it quickly dissapated as he made a quick hand motion that told the pilots to pick a ship and get going. He slowly walked over to his Venom and looked at the thing... it sure was a beautiful hunk of iron. He knew it inside and out... more or less. The individual engineers were amongst the first people that Crassus talked to after he boarded The Aegis, showed him how to keep the thing up and running. Needless to say, he knew that nothing was wrong with it. He climbed up the craft and slipped into the seat of the thing. The seat slowly formed and molded itself to his form, it was awkward yet comfortable.

Crassus grabbed for his helmet and put it on so that he could speak to them all via the commlink. He watched as little blue squares appeared around the pilots of each of the XSF-47s with status, speed, pilot health, and callsign slowly winked onto his HUD. He flipped what looked like a random switch and began to speak, his voice was now completely devoid of the cultured tones that he was using not thirty seconds before.

"Mmmk, folks, Force-One will form up on Viper, number two on Rabbit. Viper, g'head and take your flight to the black."

As he waited for Shen's team to lift off he allowed his mind to wander to the other pilots. He could feel their excitement, nervousness, pride, and even fear. Good. Fear kept them alert, they would need to be if they were going to run with him.

Crass, being a Zeltron, could sense emotions rolling off of living things. He was more acute to emotions than even most Zeltrons... if it were not for years of conditioning he would likely be an emotional wreck. He took the time to delve into the force connection between him and his sister, no-one, not even Shen, knew about her. She was a Sith Special Operations Trooper. If the republic knew of her then Crass' surprisingly high security clearance would no-doubt be thrown out. He shook his mind of those thoughts.... and stopped delving into their connection.

It had felt like so long since he was sitting in a cockpit... yeah he ran garrison duty back on Coruscant... but that wasn't much. Before that he was made an instructor in flight school.... but he really never got much in the way of flight time, his time in a ship was almost always spent in the second seat of a modified starfighter.

He would have a little bit of rust.

It didn't take long for the pilots to figure out the ins and outs of their fighters... they were the best of the best after all.

"Now for the fun part. Y'all are obviously amazing in space, but I have the feeling that most of the action we will see will be in atmosphere. So.... I managed to get Kuat and Command to let us use one of their atmosphereic Jet testing areas to have our little mock dogfight. Form on me."

With that he began to head towards the training area. He smirked. Sometimes the best pilots in space were the worst in atmosphere where they had to worry about stalls and Gs.

Shen threw on her helmet after her little shout out, and soon heard Crassus' voice.

"Roger that Lead. Force-One follow me out."

Shen quickly ran through the take-off procedure, fed fuel into the burners and found herself in the space. She could sense her squad following her out, two at a time. She could vaguely sense the other lifeforms in the surrounding ships. Shen went through various dives and high speed turns to get herself acquainted to the Venom's maneuverability.

"Oh I think me and the Venom are gonna get along just fine" she said with an almost feline purr to her voice.

Shen couldn't see space like the rest of the pilots, but that made it all the more mysterious. She continued to run through various tests with Force-One to make sure they all worked the kinks our of their system. These werethe best pilots around, Shen had no doubt about it after their little practice run. She soon heard Crassus' voice and let out a low groan..

UGH! atmosphere! how she despised gravity

She wasn't alone as she heard others groaning over the comlink. She couldn't help but smile though, this was going to be interesting.

"As ordered, Lead" she responded and her squad formed up with Crassus' and made their way towards the training ground.

Lieutenant Rictor Talros' body was crushed against the seat as his venom fighter shot out of the port hanger of the GRS Aegis Ah freedom of flight The young man thought to himself as he twisted the high performance fighter through a lazy barrel roll before arching the fighter towards the assembly area. Rictor held something of a smile as he heard many of the other pilots groan about the leader's orders of going into the atmosphere. For his part Rictor was actually rather happy to go down, one didn't really get the feeling of the speed or maneuvering of a fighting in space in his own opinion. Rictor clipped off a light copy over the comm array to his own squadron lead before flicking a switch to activate the primary re-entry systems.

It didn't take long for the pilots of the '433^rd to find their training ground, a rather large patch of forest that stretched for about a 100 miles, picturesque mountains could be seen in the distance, the view was beyond beautiful. Crass sighed as he looked out of the canopy at his 5 wingmen, all formed up perfectly behind him in a wedge.

"Alright, folks. You might find that your laser cannons have a ViFiTS mount. You don't have to worry about killing each other. Okay... lets give each other some distance."

He chuckled a little into the comm unit. ViFiTS... Virtual Fire Training System, it basically fired a ray of light that tripped sensors on the craft's skin, essentially telling the pilot that he was "dead". After the two forces were a good distance apart he spoke into the comm again.

"Lets do it."

With that he banked his wings to the left and did an extremely sharp turn towards the "enemy" fighters, but not head on... he would be heading towards them at about a 60 degree angle. Crass slowly throttled up to full speed, all that had to do then was watch... and wait. He picked the lead fighter in the formation, or what looked to be it anyways, that would be the first one to go down. He quietly spoke to himself, not bothering to key the comm... it was a little quote from one of his favorite books that he said before every sortie, be it real or simulated.

"I am a leaf on the wind. Watch me soar."

He screeched past Shen's fighters and sharply banked into them, if they didn't turn with him then they would be in a world of hurt. The turn was amazingly sharp, far more then he was used to anyways, the Venom used thrust vectoring. It had little vents that directed the thrust into the direction of the turn, making the Venom extremely maneuverable.

It would be fun to see how far his new flock could take this new technology.

Shen wasn't what you would call ecstatic about this whole atmospheric training thing. She preferred to be in the big open space, where most of her dogfighting experience was. She could still handle herself quite well in atmosphere she just wouldn't like it.

"Alright everyone, lets push it to the limit!"

She watched as Crassus' squad banked and then rushed past her own squad. She knew he would be banking, to try and get behind them, she wasn't about to let that happen. She accelerated forward and then banked to the left with half her squad, while the other three banked to the right.

It looks like this baby can writhe and wriggle just like a snake. We really are a match made in heaven Venom

Shen couldn't tell which one the commander was in, but she hoped it wasn't the one she was heading straight for. She did love a good challenge but getting shot down before the rest of her squad was not exactly the result she desired.

"Accelerate to attack speed"(Ive always wanted to say that:p)

She was accelerating quickly towards the fight directly opposite to her. Just as they were getting relatively close, she jammed the stick down, sending her plane under her opponent's. She quickly leveled out and broke hard left, and accelerated towards he opponent. She was perfectly in line(behind) the fighter, and he depressed the trigger multiple times hoping she made her first 'kill'.

Rictor reached up with what was normally his throttle hand to engage his virtual cockpit system and switch on the ViFiTS system as he followed his squadron leader. As the physical portions of his venom's cockpit began to fade as the virtual cockpit system replaced them with clear sky and semi translucent HUD displays he could much more easily watch the flaring swirling reddish-orange targeting markers close with his fighter and the others in his flight as the rushed past in a blur. Half rolling Rictor pulled his fighter into a hard right wing tip turn as all but one other fighter fallowed their leader to the left. Snapping out of the turn powered the fighter's ion engines up to full power and streaked at the retreating glow of the other flight's engines as the lean multi-role venom struggled to make ground on the quickly flying fighters.

Painfully slowly rictor's venom creeped up on the rear of the previously attacking flight's far left fighter. Closing Rictor glared through the targeting pipor floating in the center of his helmet's screen as slowly it ticked down the targeting distance to the rear of the fighter no beginning to materialize clearly. "Shoot." Rictor didn't even wait for the computerized feminine voice to finish saying the Sh, before he depressed the thumb trigger on top of his control stick. Normally at this point one would see a stream of golden red bolts boiling through the air towards the fighter, but in a training all one would see was a thin gold line computed by the computer to show the trajectory the round would have taken.

Excitement radiated off the 25-year-old Balosar almost physically. This was what he lived for. This is why he gave himself a second chance and why the Republic military believed in him. At least, he hoped so. After three years in initiation training and boot camp, then five more in the Navy, training and finally actively flying in the Blackholes for the Starfighter regiment, he was ready to actually get something done for his government. Not that the 'holes were some puny squadron. No, they were great, and he would have loved to stay with them for the rest of his military career. However, when his CO recommended him for transfer, he jumped at the chance. He didn't know a whole lot about this new squadron except for the fighters they were using and a brief briefing on their purpose.

Without even bothering to register quarters on the planet of Kuat itself, he had arrived right to the shipyards and boarded the Aegis, which he had previously learned would be his new support ship, a couple of days early. He had used his time to get used to the new quarters and the time change and the other beings on board. But most especially, the cafeteria. He had to do something since there wasn't a cantina on the Aegis. At least, he hadn't found one yet.

But now he was standing in the hangar of the large battleship, almost twitching with his excitement. And he knew the others were feeling similar emotions; his antennapalps could sense their energy. He knew nothing of the others, recognized none, but was sure he would get to know them almost intimately, just like he had with the Blackholes. A squadron was strongest when all the members cared for each other.

He turned his eyes from surveying the rest of his squad when his new commander walked in, a Zeltron male. If he had waited just a few more moments, he could have studied this particularly attractive female who was standing just a few paces away. The young Balosar would definitely want to get to know her better. But now he focused up front at the CO, who had identified himself as Crassus Vossk.

Before he had a chance to follow through, a crisp but definitely sweet voice registered in his mind. The female he had been admiring. Oh, her voice was just as sexy as her body was, even hidden within her uniform. He wished and prayed that the Lieutenant Commander would place her in his flight. She was a Miraulka, if he wasn't mistaken. He had heard of them but never encountered one yet. Zeltrons, yes, but no Miraulka.

Snapping out of his reverie, he stepped forward after half the other pilots had identified themselves. "Lieutenant Pak Har'endanno at your service, sir." Pak snapped off a smart salute of his own before stepping back into the ranks with the others. The rest of the roll call went smoothly and the Commander was on to more instructions.

Pak smiled; since he had gotten here two days prior, he had already picked out his quarters. But his flightsuit was in there, so he had to head that way anyway. After being dismissed, he got their quickly, nodding hello at the other pilot he was bunking with. Pak's flightsuit was black, the traditional color of the Blackhole squadron. He thought the color made him look a little roguish, and he hoped that this new squadron would also choose black.

Suited up, he jogged over back to the hangar. A training session, already! He had only just arrived, and he would get to snug into those unbelievably sexy Venom fighters. One of the reasons he was so eager to transfer to this group. He had thought they would run some sims first to get used to them, but hands-on learning on the real deal would be even better.

Back at the hangar, Pak listened eagerly as Commander Vossk pointed up their fighters. He was even happier when he was placed in the same group of six of the beautiful Miraulka he had learned was Shenhua Noriega. Shenhua, what a beautiful name... Pak shook his head. Now was not the time to get distracted. He had to impress this new CO of his. He slid into the nearest Venom fighter and ran his gaze quickly over the controls. Nothing too out of the ordinary there. Most fighters were inherently the same when it came to controls, with minor tweaks depending on the size and shape.

Pak quickly ran through the checklist and his fighter all warmed up and ready when Vossk came over the comm. Viper, he thought. If Miss Shenhua was really all that deadly, he would have a grand challenge with her. Something he looked forward to trying. He also had thought they would choose new callsigns with this new squadron but for now, he would keep his old Blackhole one: Palps. He hadn't liked it at first, finding it a bit juvenile, a nickname slapped on him by other 'holes, but now he enjoyed it. A bit of humor never hurt anyone.

In the space around the Aegis, Pak took his Venom through its paces, starting first with easy turns and dives but moving onto sharp barrelrolls and corkscrew turns. This baby handled like a glove. He shared Shenhua's joy as he heard her on the comm mentioning her feelings for the Venom starfighter. Yes, he would enjoy this fighter immensely. No knock to the Star Hawk, but this Venom was a cut above the rest.

With the Commander's newest command, he smiled as he heard the other pilots groaning. Atmosphere really wasn't all that bad. And despite how well-made these fighters were, it probably was for the best that they practice in atmosphere where the environment was a little more controllable. He followed Shenhua in towards the planet of Kuat.

As Vossk's half of the squadron banked around and came at him, Pak followed Shenhua off to the port side with her and one other pilot. He had noticed the way she interacted with the LooCom earlier in the hangar. Obviously they had prior experience with each other. His antennapalps could sense that much. So for now he was content to follow the woman's lead, but waited for his chance to bust and shine, to prove to everyone how good he really was.

He found his chance when he saw the Miraulka break off after a single fighter. Pak shoved his stick down and shot off almost vertically, avoiding a shot from the "enemy." He took a slow arc down and came up behind a couple of the baddies from Vossk's team. Snapping off a couple of shots, he then barrellrolled off to the starboard side, not even waiting to see if his shots hit or not. He had to play this like a real right with real consequences. He saw too many pilots getting themselves killed in sims and in real life because they waited to see their artwork explode or not. Shaking his head thinking about it, he took his Venom off to group up with the others of his team, scanning his board for another target.

A wry smile pursed Crass' lips as half of Shen's force turned with him rather than into him. He could probably take out one of them before the other three came about... but then these were some of the best pilots in the 'verse. He kept turning until he found himself staring down the tail pipe of one of the rival venoms, he pressed the trigger down and watched the computer simulated laser bolts speed towards the fighter.

He barely had time to see if his salvo hit its mark before he saw the red lines of the laser cannon, while it was simply the computer telling him that he was being shot at, the sight still scared the daylights out of him. How did that pilot circle around that quick? He smirked. Yup, these were the best pilots in the 'verse. Crass jerked his nose up towards the sky and firewalled the throttle, while this probably wouldn't shake the pilot it would most certainly make it harder for him to aim in.

Crass hit the air brakes and threw the nose back to the ground... he caught a glance of the pilot in her cockpit as he passed: It was Shen. This should be a fun game of cat and mouse. Now the warnings and calls for help of the five pilots filled his ears. That is when the Zeltron noticed a lone fighter going after one of the pilots and break off... the pilots wingman broke off after the assailant (who was Pak) as the other pilot let out a sigh and an, “I'm gone.”

He then realized that he broke line of sight with Shen and cursed as he frantically began to thrash around in the cockpit, craning his head in an attempt to find his old friend in a slight panic. Four years ago she was one of the better pilots in the 'Rodgers... she could only have gotten better.