Chapter 3

Cole walked into the simulator room. Inside was a vast array of different mockups of New Republic and Imperial fighter cockpits. Torin walked over to the bar and ordered a non-alcoholic fruit fizz, since alcoholic beverages were forbidden when on duty. Sitting at the bar, he watched as a small group of pilots, some from his training squadron, others from different ones, laughed and clinked glasses as they told stories of simulator missions. Cole watched as one candidate moved his hands through the air, describing one of his maneuvers that he'd done in a recent mission. Something about those movements looked familiar. Torin caught a few words of the conversation:

"TIE...behind...sitting duck...didn't see me...stupid kid."

The candidate telling the conversation looked up and saw Torin staring at him. The other man smiled and got up, his drink still in his hand. He walked over, a large smirk on his face, and put his drink on the bar next to Cole.

"Well, well, well. Look who it is. So Torin, come back to get vaped again? Or did you finally realize that you're out of your league?"

Torin quietly sipped his drink and continued sitting there as if the man had never come up at all. The other man shoved Cole, knocking his drink out of his hand. The glass dropped off of the counter and hit the floor, smashing into a million pieces. The green liquid pooled around where the remnants of the glass were and turned the pieces of glass a similar hue as the drink.

"Hey! I'm talking to you! What? Are you deaf as well as stupid?"

Cole's right hook caught the man in the jaw. The man fell off of the bar stool and collapsed on the ground, hitting his head on the wall of the counter. The trainee's red drink splattered all over his uniform. Cole slapped a few credits on the counter and got up from his stool. He leaned down towards the dazed man and spoke to him quietly.

"Dream on, Cigner. You got lucky and you know it. I'll take you on any time. Oh, and by the way, I'm still a better pilot than you are.

The dazed man, Kalem Cigner, was one of the better pilots in the squadron, and his piloting marks were almost at Cole's standard. The only reason that Torin often lost to Cigner in the simulators was because of his stupidity on occasions. Kalem slowly got up and shook his head to clear the daze. He quickly thought of a retort so that he could continue to torment Cole.

"Oh, yeah Torin? Prove it! You and me. Here. Right now."

Another of Cole's downsides was his addiction to a challenge. Torin turned around slowly with a big smirk on his face.

"Ok, Kalem. Let's go. X-wing versus X-wing?" Cole said as he began walking towards the simulators across the room.

The other pilot smiled as well. His humongous ego was hard-pressed to back down at times.

"Deal. What type of battle?"

"One-on-one. Non-atmospheric. Twenty kilometer starting distance."

"Fine with me. Let's go."

Torin pressed the release hatch on an X-wing simulator and climbed in. He hooked up his radio to his helmet and called his R2 unit, Tate, to the simulator room. About two minutes later, Cole's R2 entered the room, rolling along pleasantly, whistling occasionally. The astromech droid plugged into the socket that represented the socket where it would have sat in a real X-wing and began turning on the various systems of the simulator.

A few units down, Kalem was doing the same in his simulator, except he had a crowd of his buddies around the unit, looking at a few holoprojectors that were about to show the course of the battle. They began placing bets on the fight, mostly in favor of Kalem. That was expected, though. They were all as egotistical and stubborn as Cigner was.

Kalem's voice buzzed on the comm unit in Cole's helmet.

"You ready yet, Torin? Or do you want to back out now?"

Torin quickly answered the other pilot's statement.

"Shut up, Kalem. Let's do this."

Cole began flicking the various switches and pressing the appropriate buttons to start up the artificial X-wing. Tate registered four engines lit and at 100 capacity. That was good.

A few moments later the screens inside Cole's simulator lit up, showing a vast, empty starfield around him. The only blip on his sensors was Kalem's X-wing, which was registered as "Grey Three." Cole's own X-wing was "Green Eight." Torin slammed the throttles to the stops, pushing all four of the snubfighter's fusial thrust engines to their limit. The craft rocketed forward, and the distance between Cole's and Kalem's X-wings began closing rapidly.

Torin reinforced his front shields with power from his lasers and switched his weapons over to proton torpedoes as he attempted to get a lock on Kalem's X-wing. Tate began beeping slowly as the reticule on Cole's windscreen turned green, attempting to find a target to lock onto. At about seven kilometers, the reticule turned yellow and Tate's tone increased, telling Cole that he was about to get a lock on the other craft. Suddenly Tate wailed out a warning tone and showed a torpedo lock on Cole's X-wing. The pilot reacted instantly, slamming the throttles back, inverting, and diving to avoid a possible proton torpedo launch. Cole could hear Kalem's laughter over the comm unit.

"Aww, is little Cole running away already? Come on! Fight me!"

Cole, furious, performed a tight loop to starboard that lined him up with Kalem again. This time Cole pumped power into his lasers and opened up at about one and a half klicks away from Kalem, which was the maximum effective distance of the X-wing's cannons. The single blasts splashed harmlessly against the other pilot's shields, giving off a white hue. However, the volley of shots that Cole continuously launched at his opponent provided him an opportunity to fool him.

Kalem laughed. "That's more like it. Now then, how shall I kill you?"

As Kalem contemplated, Cole fired more shots into Kalem's shields, slowly weakening them and temporarily blinding the other pilot. Just before the two craft were about to collide, Torin dove down underneath Kalem's X-wing and slammed on the etheric rudder, sending his craft into a one hundred and eighty degree spin. Cole quickly switched over to torpedoes again and got a solid lock moments later. The young pilot launched two torpedoes towards Kalem's X-wing. The first blew up against the other pilot's shields, collapsing them. The second torpedo struck the starboard engines on the X-wing, completely ripping off the strike foils on that side of the craft and causing the back half of the craft to evaporate. If it had been an actual battle, Kalem would have been dead from a catastrophic system failure. In this case, he was eliminated from the battle, proclaiming Cole as the winner.

Torin whooped into his helmet's radio and shut down the simulator. He popped open the hatch and jumped out to find Colonel Mora facing him, a large smile on his face.

"Colonel Mora? I...I didn't expect you to be here so soon, sir."

The colonel smiled. "That's okay, Torin. Nice shooting there. Never seen a maneuver like that. What do you call it?"

Torin, startled, studdered for a moment before thinking of something.

"Um, I haven't really thought about it, since I just came up with it. Hmm...I know. I call it the 'Torin Blind-and-Slide'."

Colonel Mora laughed. "I like it. Now why don't you go shake hands with your opponent."

Grinning, Cole hopped out of the simulator and strutted over to Kalem, grinning madly.