"WHOOOOOOO!"
Jamie let out an adrenaline-whoop when he realized he'd been vaporized in the blink of an eye.
"That was totally wicked!  Can we do that again?"

A stern voice crackles on the comm.  "If getting yourself killed is your idea of a productive day Flight Officer Webbthen perhaps I made a bad choice in recommending you for the squadron."

"Besides now is time to analyse your strategies and those your remaining colleagues emply.  Work out what you did right and how you went wront.  The commander doesn't expect everyone to survive his little simulation.  He does expect you to come out with ideas and improvements."

"Something to think about while you wait.  The Blood Angel has taken the worst you have to offer and is still flying.  The Deepstar needs nine minutes to finish her docking whilst the Blood Angel at her present speed can be there in three.  What are your options?"

"Blowing up isn't fun; the battle is...Anyway, if our objective is to keep the Blood Angel away for nine minutes, there are two major possibilites.  The first is to make her unable to get there, and the second is to make her not want to get there.
"We've already tried to blow her up, and if we continue trying with strafing runs we're all going to die.  Unless all remaining ships attack the engines, that won't help anyone, so how do we keep her from wanting to reach the Deepstar?  Threats won't work, as we already threatened to blow them up, and failed..."
This message was last edited by the player at 21:50, Wed 15 Feb 2006.

'Ram her.  Its desperate I admit, but we need something desperate.  The torpedo barrage didnt work, and we're running out of time and manpower.'  says Devon as he studies the readouts available to him.

'Not sure if anyone noticed, but at least one warhead got through and impacted the frigates hull.  That means theres breaks in the shields.  If your fast, you might be able to get a fighter through before they close the breach... if you can, try and hit the bridge, engines or hanger.  A hit to the engines stops her cold and may kill her if an engine core actually blows... destroying the bridge may lobotomize her and will at least force the surviving crew to reconsider.  If you could dive into the hanger, you'd want to hit a fuel tanker - she's bound to have a reserve aboard for refueling TIEs and shuttles and so on... aim for that.  All that fuel going up at once would blow a nice big hole in her.'

Devon pauses for a moment to recheck the info he has on the frigate.
'Worst case scenario, we loose one  more fighter.'

It wasnt the best of ideas, he knew.  But he was thinking on his feet and had the feeling that at the moment, the Captain would prefer a fast answer that might work rather than a perfect answer half an hour too late.

"We're going to have to cut our losses and run. Give the Deepstar another minute to transfer civilians. The rest will have to use lifeboats and abandon the Sarah. That'll give the Deepstar 2 minutes to plot a hyperjump and escape. The fighters can harrass the Imperials but it won't be much without torpedos." Zenna slouched in her seat. "Cut and run. There is no other way."

She tapped a few buttons on her console. "If the Sarah has the capabilities, you might find a few volunteers to pilot the Sarah into the frigate. But if the Sarah doesn't have the speed to match against the frigate, it'll just avoid her altogether."

Cyril Hyquin's facial expression changed, though none could see it. In all seriousness, he responded:

"Do you even remember who took out Grey 5's pursuer? Yes, that was me and my little cross-fire stunt that saved your wingman. I broke off my attempt to pursue a pesky TIE because the moment I saw that frigate, I knew that keeping our numbers intact was the key to a complete success in the mission!"

Cyril's voice continued a steady rise as his emotions, usually kept in check, started to flare.

"Did you ever wonder why I made that request for the remnants of Green Squadron and Grey 5, with his severely damaged fighter, to form on my own laser-stripped Z-95 and head for the Blood Angel early? It was to get our damaged squadmates and what remained of our bombers and their precious anti-frigate torpedoes out of the firefight!"

Cyril momentarily let go of his emotions, letting loose all the anger that had built up from seeing too many of his friends, no, his family, dying in the field. His voice continued to rise as he continued his ranting.

"But no! Grey 1 said the big, bad frigate 'wasn't an immediate threat'," he said, mimicking Grey 1's tone mockingly, yet convincingly.

"And you ordered Grey 5 to get his damaged Headhunter back into the thick of the action! And what did those get us? That's right: you got both of you shot to pieces and, without Green Squad's full ordnance, we allowed the Blood Angel to become a much bigger threat than it should've ever been!"

As the news of the squadron's miserable performance scrolled on his screen, he continued, "And now, here we have Grey 7 who's still so intent on destroying the Blood Angel when circumstances have long dictated that that option is no longer feasible!"

His angry tone now at a feverish pitch, Cyril screams, "So don't you ever accuse me of getting my priorities wrong, Grey 6. Your life is probably worth more to me than it is to you!"

Hyquin catches his breath, realizes he's been shouting into the comm, and closes his eyes a bit to relax. Once his heart stops racing and he clears his mind of rage, he says, once again in his cheerful voice, smiling, "Now that I got that out of my system, does anyone have any other questions for me? Greys? Captain? If not, would it possible for me to leave the simulator and go to the little Rebel's room?"
This message was last edited by the player at 14:15, Thu 16 Feb 2006.

The Captain's voice come across cold as ice.  "Denied Flight Officer Hyquin.  You will remain in the simulator until its conclusion.  Whatsmore you are an officer of the Rebel Alliance.  Act like it.  Childish outbursts acheive nothing."

"However I will enlighten you all to something.  Keep this between your aquadmates because if the COmmander finds out I told you this I'll be peeling tubers for a month."

"Your missile/torpedo attack should have worked.  The two-pronged attack was pure Rebellion tactical doctrine.  It would have destroyed or severely crippled the Blood Angel.  So why did it fail?  Because the Commander wanted it to fail.  He dumbed down your missiles and improved the Frigate's point defense laser for thirty seconds."

"Why did he do this?  It's simple.  It's not because he wants you to use.  He is not testing you on your ability to shoot down TIE's and frigates.  He's testing your ability to adapt to seemingly hopeless situations.  When the Black Talons are out there we're going to be doing the seemingly impossible.  We need innovators, not mere pilots.  We need plans to get us out alive."

"On that note here's some advice.  Hyquin has pointed out you probably can't destroy the Blood Angel and that's true.  But you don't need a kill here.  You need time.  The only way to save the Sarah aside from destroying the frigate is to make her turn.  Now how can we do that?  Look at her stats.  Think laterally.    Work together here."

"On the contrary," Cyril answered silently. "It may not work on you, Captain, but that doesn't mean it achieves nothing."

Cyril's smile widened. It may have been unintentional, but the Captain's reply told Cyril exactly how to deal with her. Judging solely on her words and the way she delivered them, there was a big possibility that she had no idea what 'Flight Officer Hyquin' really did for the Alliance. To her, he was just another officer, and an immature one at that.

Good, let her think that way. He had already gone over the chain of command to get his transfer approved, and by the Commander no less, so the less people who knew where his real talent lay, the better. "To fool your enemy, you must first fool your friends and family." It was a principle he learned at a very, very young age, and Cyril had gotten used to not thinking of what that principle had cost him.



Cyril was beginning to like it here more and more - at least the Commander had the right idea. Keeping personnel alive should always be the Alliance's priority at all times. The fact that this squadron was probably getting assigned to all kinds of trouble he had already been used to was a mere bonus.



Ah, how Cyril loved puzzles and strategy. Perhaps it was the training, perhaps it was instinct, but no one back at HQ could deny that Cyril was never in the here and now. It was quite normal for him to be thinking more than a few minutes ahead, and could adapt to virtually every possible situation - he had to, for his life depended on that skill. Being a rather lucky individual helped, of course, but Cyril was one of those that considered luck to be a skill as much as superstition, and anything that was a skill, he understood, could be developed.

Cyril had already seen the frigate's weakness - like most capital ships, she had no turbolasers at the rear and probably relied more on her engine wash than her laser turrets for rear defense. Now, however, with the entire squad lacking any missles to try and attack at that arc from a safe distance, he had to find another exploitable weakness.

"Turn," he repeated. "Make her turn," he said again. His eyes narrowed as he took a long hard look at the frigate's stats and it's image, and an enlightened look flashed across his face. His eyes darted left and right, in tune with the calculations he was mentally computing. Risk assessment carried the most weight in these situations.

"Harass the hanger flank. The Nebulon-B frigate, no matter how many starfighters it may carry in it's hanger bay, only has one launch port. Grey Squadron should concentrate on taking out that flank's 3 point-defense turrets, so Green Squadron and their more powerful lasers can close distance and take potshots close to the ship or, if they get a clear shot through the hanger, even inside her. The point isn't to destroy the Blood Angel, but to force her to turn in order to keep the increasingly more vulnerable flank away from the starfighters.

To ensure that she doesn't just roll around on her axis and keep going forward, the remaining fighters should split up into two flights and attack 30 degrees apart from each other around the axis. That way, even is she rolls, a flight of Greys will always be threatening her hanger flank, and that threat should be enough of a deterrent to force her captain to change her heading, even by single degrees, in order to throw Grey Squadron off her axis. Eventually, she'll be off course enough that the Deepstar will have enough time to evacuate. With some fancy flying, they may even buy enough time for the Sarah to also make her repairs."

'Dont think that'll work, Eight.  Her shields took the best we could throw... why should they fail to our bitty little cannons?  Got to find another way to make her turn...'  Devon mused.  how do we make that damn thing turn??

Inspiration hit and Devon snapped his fingers.  'Decoy.  We offer the Imps another target thats worth more to them than killing or capturing the Sarah will be. Have the Sarah launch on of her escape pods.  or if she has one, a shuttle is even better; the shuttle runs from the fight and its pilot starts talking to Grey  squadron.  Grey Squadron moves to escort the shuttle out the system.
The Imps will certainly be monitoring our transmissions, but probably cant crack the encryption; so when they spot the shuttle trying to run, detect its transmissions and then every rebel figher in the area moves to cover the shuttle rather than the Sarah... they'll assume that whoever is on the shuttle is more important than the Sarah.  They'll persue.  All the shuttle has to do is stay ahead of them long enough to finish the evacuation of the Sarah.    Soon as Deepstar completes the evacuation and jumps out, the fighers and shuttle can run too.'

"Now you are all thinking."  Zyra responds, satisfaction clear in her voice.  "Start planning these through.  Five how would you convince a frigate to chase a shuttle that can easily outrun it?  No frigate captain is going to chase down something he has no hope of catching."

"Eight your plan is daring but certainly possible.  It looks like Grey 7 is planning a similar strategy as we speak."

"Keep planning.  When we have to do this for real one day I want solutions.  I'd like a Nebulon-B painted on my fighter."

"Well, there is one other way... but it demands a great deal of piloting skill and bravado... plus it hinges on whether or not the Z-95 has magnetic docking equipment, like most transports."

Cyril intentionally left the idea hanging, waiting to see if anyone would be either curious enough to ask what it was, or if anyone else had the mindset he had.

"Good job, 5.  But to give the frigate the option of catching the shuttle, the shuttle has to move slowly.  Moving slowly, though would scream 'come catch me,' which the Imperials would never believe.  You have to make the engines appear damaged enough to reduce performance."

"You'd have to come up with something REALLY convincing too.  Despite popular belief, Imperial Captains are not idiots.  The whole 'my ship is damaged, come get me trick' is older than the Clone Wars.  You'd have to come up with some ingenious technique to sell it."

"Then we have to convince them them that the shuttle is important."

"First you disable two escape pods, so that it'll fire but flee as far. Then you dispatch a shuttle to retrieve the escape pod. That will take some time and Imperials will have to wonder if whatever is on the escape pod is too important to fall into enemy hands."

Zenna called out to Hyquin, "What idea are you cooking up over there?"

'yeah... launch an escape pod... only its engines fail and it cant run. Fighters move to guard it.  A shuttle is launched to collect the pod and then run for it.  Once the shuttle has collected the pod, the fighters move to defend the shuttle.  If we're willing to risk a shuttle AND leave the Sarah undefended to collect the pod whatever is in the pod is important.'

Devon grinned, pleased that his idea seemed to be meeting with approval.
'Any Imp officer would love to capture a high ranking member of the alliance ... so he's going to see what we want him to see in a manouver like that.  he'll be suspicious, definitly; but he'll be wondering "what if..."  After all, he's got the time to investigate - I mean its not like the Sarah is going anywhere is it?'

Cyril wondered why it was Grey 6 who replied. What is out of sincere curiosity, or perhaps a way to make peace with him? In either case, he was just thankful someone asked at all.

"Well, you see that the Nebulon-B's mass is concentrated at it's fore and aft, and the two are connected by a relatively thin cylinder for it's axis. Hazarding a guess, it's center of mass is probably somewhere nearer to the engine.

If the Z-95's, and perhaps even the Y-Wings, have magnetic docking gear or clamps or whatever, those that have the piloting ability could magentically clamp themselves on the axis, closer to the fore and facing the same direction, then simultaneously fire up their throttles to maximum. This makes the participating fighters act like powerful maneouvering jets that even the stabilizers won't be able to correct.

A single fighter's engine block won't be able to force the ship to turn, but eight or more fighters side-to-side probably will."

Devon shakes his head 'Surely that wont work?' he asks.  'Fighter docks; point defence gunners grin cheerfully as they spot the nice, close by and stationary target...'  Devon didnt finish the sentence, no matter how you said it; the pilots fate would still be spelt "BOOM"

"That's why I said they'd need to take out the turrets first. Turbolasers can't hit anything too close to the ship, and if you're close enough to dock, you're close enough to take out those turrets."

"Even if the point defense turrets were destroyed, eight snub fighters would hardly effect the movement of a capital ship...I think..."

"It probably won't work on a Star Destroyer, but remember that a Nebulon-B is way smaller than one of those - if this data is accurate, the length of a Z-95 is about the same width as the Nebulon-B's axis, and eight or ten such fighters side-to-side would be about equal to the length of the axis. I think it's definitely doable.

However, Grey 1, your argument does beg the question: can this same trick work on an ISD using 8 frigates instead of starfighters? Hmm, when we get out of these pods, I'll have to ask someone to run those numbers - who knows, one day we just might find ourselves needing to push an ISD into an asteroid or something."

"If you could somehow convince the captain of the Star Destroyer to not pulverize the frigates, and the frigates were more graceful than usual, then yes, they could."

"Well Devon. The plan could work, if the rest of the Greys could hear us. And only if the Imperial Captain bought the bait." Zenna changed a few settings on her console to show how much time they had before the Imperials entered weapon range. "They don't have much time. Deepstars got to make the jump out of here. Better to save one ship than to lose two!"

"Screening for the Y-Wings. Best immediate move, I say, but they really should try and take out it's engines rather than actually trying to kill it. Hmm, does Green Squad have Ion Cannons?"

Cyril parses the friendlies and looks at Green Squadron's current weapon loadout.

PM

Zenna smiled as the screen turned black. The Grey Squadron did indeed turn the Imperial ship away. Though it was only a sim, she didn't like the fact that she died in the process. Perhaps, the life of a fighter pilot was too short.