Private Like a homesick angel

[Perail Staite]

Hyperspace near the Cularin System, Thaere Sector

From her early childhood in which she went to the freight spaceport to watch the arriving and departing starships while waiting for her father to come off his shift, Perail had dreamt of taking to the stars. That desire could well be credited for the course her life had taken. After failing the aptitude tests to be accepted to pilot training programs at multiple freight carriers, she had taken the easy way out: she had fallen in with a group of smugglers who had, of course, not allowed her to actually fly a ship, but at least she had got to peek into the cockpit. Until, that was, they abandoned her on Son-Tuul...

Fortunately for her, it was considered impractical and unbecoming for a Jedi not to know how to pilot. Indeed, they were expected to be not just ordinary pilots, but to be able to steer starfighters, and they had no hesitation at throwing people in the deep end, it seemed. So she had been assigned a fellow learner who, whatever his training as a Jedi might be, was apparently already an accomplished pilot, and she found herself in a two-seated RZ-1T. It was really a rather improbable sequence of events, but Perail was excited to go along with it, and eager to please any teacher. Alas, there was a reason for why the career of a professional pilot had been denied to her. Truth be told, she simply wasn't the most talented of students in this domain.

It was, oddly enough, not her motor skills and reflexes, as one might have expected, that limited her. Perail had done surprisingly well surprisingly quickly in manual landing training even with such a highly reactive ship. But under normal circumstances, you didn't manually land a space-ship. Safe flying was all about planning, knowing how to program your flight computer and when to engage it. And then you had to keep track of all the communications and their frequencies. When it came to inter-system travel, things became even trickier because you had to plot a hyperspace jump. Sure, the computer did the actual calculations, but the computer didn't read your mind - you still had to read and input a lot of data, and if you made too many typos, it was potentially lethal.

They had spent the last few days traversing a number of systems along the Corellian run travelling rimward. The ship's speed and weapons, and the presence of a capable pilot on board, had made this appear a safe-enough endeavour, not to mention that, even if it was not wholly contained within Alliance space, it was a well-travelled hypelane. Raphael seemed to know how to get them food and a place to sleep cheaply, and where he didn't, they would sleep on the ship. It was, truth be told, rather incomprehensible to Perail how it all worked, but she accepted it as a fact about the world. Naturally - naturally? -, she was anxious to make a good impression on her teacher, but that hadn't prevented her from landing them in the middle of nowhere once, right in the empty space far between systems, from which it had been difficult to extract themselves due to lack of any navigational aids. She uncharacteristically worried that he might grow rather exasperated with her.

They were now en route to the Cularin system. Raphael had plotted the course himself this time - it was important to exit hyperspace at a safe distance to the core of the system to avoid smashing into the Comet Cloud. Some daring pilots would endeavour to jump past it, as the asteroids and comets did not possess a sufficient mass shadow to pull ships out of hyperspace, but that was a fraught manoeuvre that carried a high risk of crashing into something, somewhere, within the crowded core of the solar system. The asteroid belt was not excessively difficult to navigate as those things went, it was not dense and the beacons of the Comet Broom Service broadcasted current information and computed safe routes to those who arrived in the system. Thus is would provide a suitable practice terrain for realspace piloting skills.

You know", she said a propos of nothing, to make some conversation while in hyperspace transit, "I used to work in a Corellian bar. On Son-Tuul. Your people really get around! I know how to make ryshcate."

Raphael Gallustrade​

 

[Raphael Gallustrade]

Raphael hadn't been entirely confident when he was asked to be a piloting teacher. Nor was he all too thrilled about the ship that they'd gotten him, one of those bloody two seat trainers, but it was an important job and someone needed to do it. He also didn't know too much about the "fellow student" who he was assigned to help. She was someone that was supposedly new to the Jedi Order. Still, sharing one of his greatest joys with another, was definitely a reason to agree to be a trainer.

Sitting in the backseat of the ship, Raphael was mostly focusing his efforts on making sure that the coordinates that were tapped in were right. Thankfully, she'd largely gotten them in the right direction, really. He kept an eye on her, making sure that she was ok as they flew. Sometimes she seemed a bit tense, but he wasn't sure if that was because she was being watched or just because she was still a it nervous when it came to flying.

He'd been enjoying this, though; in many ways, it was like a vacation through the Corellian run and they'd even run into a few old friends, on their way in. Food, places to lay down... Hell sometimes they even slept on the ship. He could lightly sense her anxiety, from time to time but he didn't want to bring it up, it wouldn't help her. He couldn't help but let out a low chuckle, remembering the one time that they'd jumped out into nowhere space, for a bit. Truth be told, he'd been enjoying every part of this.

He'd programmed their jump path into the Cularin system and they'd barely avoided the comet cloud. If they weren't on a training flight, he would've tried jumping right past the dan cloud. That was one of his favorite things to do, was jump past dangerous things. It was such a thrill, sometimes, especially when going from the Force's will, instead... He made sure to keep himself grounded, though, so that he didn't start geeking out about the jumps.

"No kiddin'?" he replied, looking around at the various bits of space detritus that floated around them. "I remembered studying a bit of Corellian history. One of the biggest things that it talks about the most is how we used to sail the seas of Corellia, before we took to space." But when she mentioned ryshcate, his head and attention immediately snapped over to her "Wait, you do?! Oh chit, it's been so long since I've had ryshcate!" He leaned back, grinning. "Man... I hould get some ryshcate, eventually..." He blinks, leaning forward. "Ah, we're coming up on it soon, get ready to drop out of hyperspace."

Perail Staite