Dining on ashes (Complete)

[Tannis V'larr]

Imperial Academy of Carida, 1 BBY

Ensign Tannis V'larr, adjunct flight instructor, crossed to the first of four training simulators with savage urgency in his long stride. Even before the pod, the same shape and size as an eyeball cockpit, hissed and settled back into its hydraulic carriage, the Sikarran halfbreed hammered the override code into the control panel. The exit hatch in the side of the simulator slid free from its cowl, pouring acrid smoke into the test hangar.

A slight figure in a trainee's flight suit spilled out from the still-sparking simulator pod and onto the gangway, still unsteady on her feet after the exceedingly convincing experience of spinning out and breaking up in a planet's upper atmosphere at a suicidally high speed.

Tannis did not even allow the pilot to remove her flight helmet before he said, in a sharp voice loud enough for her assembled squadmates to hear, "Cadet Inirial. You were the flight leader for this exercise. How would you critique your performance?"

[Carré Inirial]

Slender hands shook as she disconnected the helmet and tore it away from her head. Long sable curls spilled free as one hand tightened into a fist and the other sported a white-knuckled grip on her helmet. Superior or not, she fixed Tannis with an emerald glare that had withered lesser men.

"Acceptable, given the hellacious conditions you set for the mission and then altered to suit your whims...sir." Carré snapped in response, ignoring the looks and murmurs from the others. While she'd push any button she could, she'd never come so close to pure insubordination before.

As such, she danced a little closer to it, when her mouth ran off without the clearance of her mind. "I counted two instances where my control yoke was compromised in the midst of maneuvers where no reason for it was possible, and another where a direct hit I was certain I'd avoided suddenly flashed across my sensors and took my shields down by nearly seventy percent!"

Pure disgust and frustration danced across her features as she pitched her helmet off to the side and resisted the urge to hit him.

Barely.

[Tannis V'larr]

"Combat in flight is unpredictable. An intimate familiarity with the capabilities of both your spacecraft and your wingmates is essential for dealing with unforeseen challenges. However, if you consider the loss of all pilots the result of an 'acceptable' performance, then clearly you are ready for your commission at this very moment."

He matched Carré's fury with implacable calm. Smoke still curled out of the simulator behind the young pilot.

"Cadet Ruyen, what was Cadet Inirial's first mistake?"

Carré's wingman, a lanky, blond Chandrilan, stood rigid with his mouth partway open, trying to decide whose wrath was more risky to provoke. "Uh... she destroyed the flight simulator, sir."

"That was her last mistake," Tannis replied, still skewering the Alderaanian girl with his pale yellow eyes. "Cadet Rhys?"

One of the senior cadets, Rhys wisely avoided eye contact with either Tannis or the accused. "She engaged the enemy, sir."

Tannis lowered his head in what from any other species could have been called a leer. "Precisely."

[Carré Inirial]

A hand lifted to pinch the bridge of her nose for a moment, trying to bring some semblance of coherency back to her viciously racing thoughts. A sharp bite to her lower lip produced a trickle of blood, but it served its purpose. It quelled the laughter that threatened to spill out, and sharpened her senses.

She was still livid, however, at least Carré felt like she could think again.

Ruyen's stammered comment made her tilt her head back towards her sim, emerald eyes flicking over the cracked struts, the charring stretched across the underbelly, and the smoke that still billowed out from the interior. So much for the 'indestructable' technology that could take anything thrown at it.

Rhys' quiet answer almost escaped her notice, but the girl's avoidance of her gaze answered more than one lingering question she'd had about her since the day she'd arrived. Carré filed away the observation to mull over at a later time, before turning her attention back to Tannis.


Damnable bastard had to be good-looking too, didn't he.

You are formally engaged.

I'm aware of that...hard to forget when my father reminds me of it every time I call home.

And yet you're attracted to the man who's obviously got a hell of a grudge against you?

Never said I made much sense.

She drew herself up and crossed her arms over her chest, meeting his glare with one of her own in spite of the obvious difference in their height. Or was it a leer...no, definitely a glare. He wouldn't dare be so obvious with a leer.

"Your pre-flight instructions did not contain explicit instructions to not engage the enemy. At the completion of the initial task, I thought it prudent to do so as you did not interrupt to critique our performance as is your usual way." she replied, venom still lacing her tone.

[Tannis V'larr]

"And you did so by pursuing a pair of Z-95 Headhunters into a debris field laced with Selenite-71, a radioactive isotope notorious for reflecting the sensor beams of most small spacecraft, including the TIE/ln and its variants," Tannis replied. "You followed the enemy into a trap. You were destroyed not by an enemy fighter but by an ion cannon mounted on a modified CR90 corvette, one of three small capital ships concealed in the debris."

The Sikarran halfbreed keyed a command into a control panel, pulling up a tactical readout of the mission site onto the large vidscreen above the simulator pods. Red outlines marked the position of all hostile units in the field. There were a lot of them.

"Had you survived the corvette's broadside and escaped the debris field, there was an entire squadron of Helix-class light interceptors operating on remotely transmitted targeting data prepared to overtake you. As it is, you did not even survive long enough to transmit your flight records to an Imperial relay station before meeting your demise. A pirate operation of no insignificance remains free to pillage our supply routes at their convenience."

[Carré Inirial]

The girl spun on the heel of her boot, the movement severely precise. She stalked back to her ruined sim and leaned inside, plucking out a half-melted flimsi. Turning once more, she returned to her previous position.

Rather, she was a half-step closer than she had been.

Holding the flimsi up in the bloody fingers of her left hand, its protective glove half melted away. Her voice, when it emerged, had acheived a new level of flat and her Alderaanian accent was even more pronounced than usual. "You are mistaken, Ensign. The moment it began to look grim, I set my sensor array and flight data on auto-transmit. They were transmitting up until the moment my TIE exploded, and according to this read-out, just enough data made it through to be of use to the cruiser that we dropped from."

Emerald eyes flicked up to the holoscreen briefly, before narrowing and returning to Tannis' face. The bastard had done this to her purpose. This humiliation had been planned out. As her free hand curled into a fist, she wondered distantly who she'd pissed off this time.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis took the film in his hands and perused the readout. "You may be correct. Unfortunately, the damage you dealt to the simulator rendered the control room incapable of confirming your transmission. In any case, the loss of your ship and your wingmates is more than enough to earn a failing grade for the exercise."

Before she could voice any protest, he turned toward the rest of the assembled training squadron. "None of you," he said, his voice like iron, "is good enough to ignore the rudimentary protocols of threat assessment and response. An unknown threat is a deadly threat. The universe is under no obligation to provide you with a fair fight, let alone to satisfy your personal thirst for glory. Each of you will write a full mission report on Gamma Flight's telemetry. You will detail all the tactical and procedural errors made by its pilots and its leader, and you will suggest alternative actions which may have produced a more favorable outcome. This report is due in two days' time. You are dismissed."

Tannis turned on a bootheel and walked at a leisurely pace toward the east exit of the training hangar.

[Carré Inirial]

Ruyen and Rhys both backed away when she met their gaze, and the others were doing their level best to melt into the background, unnoticed. Before she realized she was even moving, she'd already crossed the room. Bloody fingers lifted and tapped Tannis' shoulder with a deceptively delicate touch.

You really shouldn-

He turned with an infuriating slowness, his expression a cross between a smirk and and a patronizing smile. Carré pause, emerald eyes tracing the line of his jaw with a heated glance that could have been interpreted in a myriad of ways.

It only lasted a moment, though.

Before her fist met the spot her eyes had lingered on.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis rocked backward with the blow, just enough to avoid taking the full force of Carré's pointed fist. He moved quickly, pulling Carré's arm into a joint lock and bearing her down hard to the hangar floor.

He pinned the squirming cadet there on the deck with her arm folded painfully behind her back. A pair of security guards came clattering toward the scuffle with their sidearms out. Tannis intercepted them with a fierce glare. "Return to your posts," he said.

"Sir, do you--"

"That's an order."

The guards shared an incredulous look, holstered their weapons, and slowly backed away from the scene. On the other side of the hangar, the gaggle of cadets edged closer. Tannis turned his wrath toward them.

"You do have other duties to attend to?"

There was a ragged chorus of "Yes sirs," and the herd thinned. When the last of them had gone, and Carré had given up on trying to wriggle out of his grasp, he released her and rose to his feet.

"Can I help you with something, Cadet?" he asked primly.

[Carré Inirial]

She took a few moments, when he let her loose, taking deep breaths and stretching out her arm. A graceful movement saw her push up from the floor and rise to her feet, gritting her teeth she pulled the ruined glove from her burned hand.

Finger by finger, she pulled it off and surveyed the damage, thankful her adrenaline was still holding off most of the pain.

By the time Carré looked up and met Tannis' gaze once more, she'd regained some measure of composure. She would not give him any further satisfaction in her out of control temper. For at least a few minutes, anyway, she mused.

"Why the Solis mission? And why today, when there are four fleet Admirals looking over the cadets? Is my public humiliation the Academy past-time?" she asked, tilting her head to one side, her voice audibly forced to a lighter tone.

[Tannis V'larr]

By now he had regained his ramrod posture, hands clasped behind his back, only a few misplaced hairs betraying that he had just been wrestling her to the floor.

"You do not have the luxury of choosing your battles in active duty. Why should you expect anything different from your training? If you cannot control the circumstances of the mission, you must rise to them. Or are you saying you are incapable of doing so?"

[Carré Inirial]

His response elicited a sigh and a gentle shake of her head. had she really expected any different? Certainly not. But there was always some measure of hope that somewhere, at some point, someone would grow a pair of balls and tell her the truth. Since she'd arrived at the Academy, it was as if she'd had a target painted on her.

Because of her father, her older brothers, her family's Royal status on Alderaan...Carré just couldn't catch an opportunity to prove herself.

There was a fair amount, she thought, that could have happened differently in the sim mission. If she'd just trusted her sensor array data, maybe-

-pain blasted through her senses as she hissed a string of curses under her breath, her hands beginning to shake as the adrenaline wore off. Great...just frakkin' great. Could this day get any worse?

"I am more than capable. Today was simply not my finest hour." Carré managed to say with a bit more vehemence than she likely should have. "Will there be anything else, sir? I'd like to have my hand tended to, with your permission."

[Tannis V'larr]

"There is still the matter of your striking a superior officer," Tannis replied. "Combined with your record of insubordinate behavior, I have sufficient grounds to bring you before a full tribunal."

He let the threat of expulsion hang in the air for a desperate moment to see how she weathered it.

"If you are capable of rising to the circumstances, then you must prove it. You will attend to your injuries, and then you will meet me back here at nineteen hundred hours. Do not be late. You are dismissed, Cadet."

[Carré Inirial]

Plump lips pressed together in a straight line as her shoulders tightened. Tannis had hit on perhaps the only thing that would get to her. Appearing before a tribunal would most certainly disappoint her father and her brothers....and that was the worst thing she could possibly think of. Their opinions meant everything to her.

Drawing herself up with precise movements, she saluted crisply. "Nineteen hundred hours, yes sir." Turning neatly on her heel, she took measured steps to the nearest exit and made a bee-line for the medcenter.

[Tannis V'larr]

At nineteen hundred, Tannis stood reviewing roster notes on a datapad in the middle of the training hangar. He looked up at the sound of approaching footsteps.

"Cadet Inirial. Good. We have little time to waste."

He was dressed in a flight suit with a pilot's helmet under his arm. He set the datapad on a work table and beckoned her in.

"You will be performing an exercise with me. Please suit up and take your position in pod three. Pod one is unavailable, for obvious reasons."

[Carré Inirial]

Flexing her newly healed fingers, she frowned at the slight tightness of the skin over her fingertips. She kept moving them as she walked back towards the hanger bay, pleased that she'd be on time.

And that it would be one less thing he could call her on.

Carré nodded her assent as he spoke and made quick work of changing into a flightsuit and grabbing up her helmet. She settled into the third pod, tossing a grin at the broken sim in spite of the drama had ensued. Her helmet slid on as the hatch closed and the simulator purred to life.

As the lights on her instruments flicked on, her comm crackled to life. Carré waited to hear Tannis' instructions as her fingers coursed lightly over the controls.

[Tannis V'larr]

Tannis's voice on the comm was cool and clinical.

"Since you are so eager for an opportunity to display your talents, Cadet, I have given you one. This simulation will be more challenging than any you have undertaken so far. I frankly do not expect you to succeed."

The forward viewer was still dark, but a set of ship's schematics appeared there - a variant of the TIE fighter with split dagger-shaped panels, sleek, contoured, and full of menace.

"You will be flying an advanced design called the TIE Interceptor. Perhaps you've heard of it?"

It was common knowledge by now at the academy that she owned one of the craft - her wealthy father had bought it for her in congratulation for her acceptance to the academy. Now Tannis would test her knowledge of its capabilities.

"I need not remind you that while it is significantly faster and more maneuverable than the standard TIE/ln, it is also unshielded," Tannis said. "When flying in pitched combat, there can be no room for errors. Your only objectives for this mission are to form on my wing and follow me. To succeed, you must push your craft to the limits of its capabilities. You must also trust me implicitly and follow my orders without hesitation. Do you understand?"

[Carré Inirial]

She permitted herself a small sigh of pleasure, fingers coursing over the controls as emerald eyes gazed over the schematics. This...this she could do. This is what she was meant to do, she mused.

Carré nodded as Tannis continued, too pleased to be in an Interceptor to argue with his assumption that she'd never survive.

"Perfectly understood. Broader mission parameters, sir?" she asked, doing her best to keep her voice cool and professional in spite of her giddiness.

[Tannis V'larr]

"Broader parameters?' Tannis replied. "Survive."

A crack of starlight appeared before them, and, with a heavy groan, a large pair of space doors began to grind open. Carre's fighter sat in an Imperial hangar bay with one other Interceptor beside her. And before them, not even masked by an air shield, was a vast fleet of ships, Rebel and Imperial, hundreds upon hundreds scattered in every direction, locked in unrelenting battle. Bursts of turbolaser fire latticed the battlefield in unpredictable lances of red and green, exploding engines bloomed like fireworks, and starfighters of every type imaginable bolted in all directions, tiny flies desperately avoiding being crushed between the giants.

An X-Wing hurtled past the open hangar bay and struck a spinning shard of molten hull plating. It tumbled off-course and beyond the frame of the doors, striking the hull of their mothership and setting the whole superstructure rumbling.

"Now."

Tannis's interceptor rocketed out of its clamps in a shimmering streak of ions and into the deadly melee outside.

[Carré Inirial]

There was nothing to say.

Carré punched the controls forward and rocketed after him. Once clear of the rumbling mothership, she slipped up behind him and slightly to his right hand side, the usual place for the wingman in a two ship formation.

Emerald eyes were wide as she flipped neatly onto her side with the blaring proximity alarm coming from her sensors. A barrage of laser fire slid by in a wide swath of blue, and it was all she could do to not peal away and go chasing after the Rebel craft.

But that wasn't her mission here. Sticking to Tannis' side was...as was not getting vaped.