fandomhigh | Spaceships 101- 1st period- Week #3

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spaceships 101

Spaceships 101- 1st period- Week #3

"Hey, guys. We've got a special guest in class today," Jaina greeted the class, gesturing to the little astromech next to her. "This is Sneaker. Say hi, Sneaker."

The astromech let out a short series of whistles as a hello, and Jaina patted his dome. "Where I come from, starfighters tend to be flown with the aid of astromech droids. They help you with the flight and repairing systems if anything goes wrong. While the ships can be flown without them, I don't recommend it. Feel free to say hi to him, you probably won't understand a thing he's saying and I don't actually know his personality too well yet, but it doesn't hurt to be polite.

"And yes, this means we're getting you into actual starfighters today. This means you get weaponry, and things to fight against. We're starting off with the B-wing," she said, activating the hologram to show them exactly what the B-wing was. "These things have been around for a few dozen years now, and I'm not starting you off easy. The B-wing is clunky. They're heavily armed, nicely sheilded, and this also makes them difficult to maneuver. They're not fast, either. I'm setting you up in what seems like a simple run. You're going one at a time, flying in formation with your standard twelve-ship squadron, under attack from a few TIE fighters, because why not. You're working on a time limit, just get through those fighters without getting shot down. You're going to take hits. Get used to it, it happens to the best of us. Just see how you do, and if you need me, just ask."

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Like you get to shoot things!

Andrew Wiggin

Bobby Drake

Calvin

Cally

Ben Skywalker

Asuna Kagurazaka

Tahiri Veila

Momoko Akatsutsumi

Shane Gooseman

Jack McCallister

Less talky this week, whee!

Tahiri was grimacing just a bit; she hadn't done much work with B-wings at all, and that was purely in simulators, but they were not her favorites at all.

See above re: clunky. Sturdy, yes, and that was nice, but she lacked the experience to really maneuver a B-wing. In so much as a B-wing could be maneuvered . . .

Why couldn't they just be flying today? Or at least be fighting drone ships and, you know, not killing other pilots?

Talk to your fellow students, say hi to the cute widdle astromech...

Robots and self-mobile computers of various sorts, Cally was used to. Robots with personalities, outside of video-fiction or documentaries on some eccentric genius? That was something new.

"Hello?" she said to it, trying not to feel foolish as she wondered how sentient it was, or had been programmed to believe it was. "I am Cally."

That series of beeps and whistles was oh so helpful - though it did make her speculate on whether she could drum up some sort of translation unit.

Awww, Sneaker!

"Hey, buddy," Ben said, crouching down to be at the astromech's height. "Bet you don't recognize me at all."

Too bad Sneaker wasn't going to stick around very long...but Ben wasn't going to mention that to the droid. If he remembered correctly, Sneaker was a little high-strung for an astromech.

Sneaker didn't know anyone yet. So there was a confused beep, maybe a droid version of "Should I?" Or maybe it was the droid version of "Oh yeah, I totally recognize you, how's it going."

"He's a little new," Jaina supplied.

Ben bit back a whine about how everyone else had an astromech but him. He had a cherry red speeder that didn't need an astromech. He was plenty spoiled.

"I'm Ben," he said instead, smiling at Sneaker. "Nice to meet you." Again.

"Hey, there," Tahiri told the astromech, smiling partly because it was sort of family and because it hadn't gotten less astral that she could look at droids and not worry about getting twitchy now. It made her wish she hadn't had to leave hers behind when she'd come back to Fandom after the war, but after all the droid purging the Yuuzhan Vong had done, astromechs had been a bit of a commodity and there had to be someone who needed an R7 unit more than she would. "You look newer than I recognize. Is Jaina treating you all right?"

. . . now she wanted her own astromech.

Go figure.

Sneaker responded with something that really did sound like a beeped "Meh."

Ignore Jaina frowning at him at that.

Tahiri glanced at Jaina and quirked an eyebrow, then turned back to Sneaker. "Oh, come on, it can't be that bad."

Flying as part of a squadron, try to defend yourself against enemy ships. How'd you do at the end of the time limit?

Cally was fine -- even got off a few shots of her own -- until the first bolt hit her ship. The rolling shudder after the impact threw her back to her own shuttle for a moment, sure she was going to get sucked into a swirling void, eyes closed and fighting back nausea and dizziness.

It passed; she wrestled the controls back in time to avoid kiting sideways into one of her own squadron. The next hit was harder because she'd had no time to prepare for it, but at least this time she took it with her eyes open.

Sometimes it seemed to Ben that the only career choices in the galaxy were Jedi, bounty hunter, and fighter pilot and that everyone else he knew had gotten at least a shot to be a fighter pilot.

Used to working alone, he was not great at flying as part of a squadron and kept drifting into other people's line of fire accidentally.

It was a fairly unhappy Skywalker who thought he should have done better when he popped open the sim's canopy.

Sending them up against TIEs in a fighter geared toward heavy assault against capital ships? Boy, Jaina really wasn't starting them off easy. It wasn't often that Tahiri got to do something involving ships where she had more experience than Ben did, so there was an odd smile on her face when she got into the sim for her turn.

It wasn't like working with Barefoot Squadron, though; there, she'd had time to develop a rapport with her pilots, who in turn had learned to act as support for an inexperienced leader. And these . . . weren't real pilots, anyway, much less ones who were used to taking orders that came out with less authority at times than they should have.

The B-Wing's clunky maneuvering wasn't helping much with that, and for the first half of the run her evasive actions looked jerky and absolutely horrible, but it was, she thought, better than flying in a squadron of mixed starfighters; if she'd had to coordinate these B-Wings mixed in with, say, some A-Wings, it'd have been a nightmare. So much more respect for the Wild Knights now, seriously.

All in all, she was pretty pleased with herself by the time she finished the run; she'd kept her squadron intact and -- thanks mostly to the B-Wing's heavy shielding -- hadn't even slagged any major components on her ship, and managed to take out two TIEs on the way through.

For Tahiri, that was pretty amazing, actually.

A squadron was a team, and Momoko was used to working as part of a team, so her initial desire to simply avoid all the enemy and get safely to the goal of the sim without killing any tie-fighter pilots was squashed by her need to make sure the rest of her team made it through.

Of course she was also used to being a bit more agile of a flier, and her attempts to get the B-Wing to dodge and weave around the enemy and friendly fire were pretty much doomed to failure from the get-go. It was possibly her mood, but she was fighting more with the controls, trying to get the ship to do what she wanted, than with the tie fighters.

It was definitely her mood that had her wishing she was in an X-Wing, instead.

Bobby was intent on trying to get through the sim without actually shooting anyone. Being raised by a pacifist even overlaid the 14 year old boy part sometimes. It really didn't work. Between the lack of maneuverability of the ship and Bobby's lack of being a great flyer, he failed at every attempt.

Who's totally hanging with the droid when you're not.

Jaina canonically programs one of her droids with snark. I so wish that was the one she had now. *hugs Rowdy*

Edited 2010-09-14 04:44 (UTC)

I love Rowdy.

*sulks in the Never Gets A Named Astromech corner*

*sulks in the "Artoo is my only friend" corner*

...Jaina's the only character who actually names her droids, huh? How did it take me this long to realize it?

ETA I take it back, I forgot Whistler. Bad me.

Edited 2010-09-14 19:22 (UTC)

And Mynock! :D

Jaina names the most droids. She loses astromechs like Tahiri loses lightsabers. :D

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Spaceships 101- 1st period- Week #3

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