Jaina Solo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sticksofthejedi) wrote2014-04-21 11:12 pm
sticksofthejedi) wrote2014-04-21 11:12 pm
Entry tags:
Memory 87
Memory: Competitive asteroid belt piloting.
Received: Day 341, morning
Form: comes in the form of small black cookies -- they're rich double chocolate. 1 use, obvs.
Summary: The Solo-Skywalker family competes in Lando's Folly, an asteroid belt run using TIE fighters outfitted with repulsor shields.
--
The Solo-Skywalker family is visiting Lando at his latest flaky business investment! Aside from shipping freighters, he's set up a bit of a side entertainment racket: they're learning about it in a monitoring room showing shots of an asteroid belt that's been dubbed Lando's Folly. He's explaining that trying to mine most asteroids isn't actually profitable, but the ones that are profitable are jackpots. They're using old-design Imperial TIE fighters. The older members of the family are displeased because EMPIRE but Jaina's intrigued because they're nimble little things. He explains to her that they've mapped out "particularly nasty" sections and asks if she'd like to try.
There's prep time, but practically the next thing she knows, she's listening to technicians explaining the modifications they've made to the controls. Unlike regular TIE fighters, these are outfitted with a repulser shield to help it bounce off asteroids instead of simply smash into the rocks; the technicians say early on most of the pilots would end up in a series of ricochets until they inevitably failed to set it up right and would go crashing out of the belt. There's been no fatalities, but most end up unconscious and one almost died. It's been tweaked and by now if you crash into an asteroid, it should just be "the spin of your life."
The shields, it turns out, are powered by the nearby space station, rather than the starfighter itself. This is a surprise, because the militaries of the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic both want to perfect this technology; there's silent speculation that this is going to be the real gold mine for Lando's operation. The fighters are also outfitted with hyperdrives, which is less impressive because Jaina was doing that to TIE fighters when she was twelve. (Luke manages to still be impressed, though, because Luke.)
All three of the Solo kids take test runs in the fighters, including a deliberate half-speed crash into a mountainside to get accustomed to how the repulsor shields work. But getting to do that much isn't satisfying: she remembers seeing a posting board listing the top pilots for time navigating the belt before getting bounced out by collisions. She recognized Miko Reglia at seventh place, and big dumb sexy Kyp Durron is the current champion at eleven minutes and thirteen seconds. Miko is Kyp's apprentice.
Jacen takes the competitive run first, relying purely on a Force meditation and managing five minutes in the belt before getting knocked out. Jaina can feel in the twin bond that he's shaken up by the asteroid hit but otherwise fine. That will get him on the leader board, if not exactly high.
Anakin goes next, and Jaina recognizes a bit of a philosophical fight resurfacing between the two: where Jacen relied on the Force almost exclusively, Anakin relies almost entirely on his physical senses. Jaina turns off her comm while Anakin squeals in delight, and starts focusing on finding her center, her calm spot in the Force, and testing the controls to try getting a bit more familiar with it.
The next call she gets is from the ground controller. Anakin surpassed Jacen -- she anticipates a "fun" conversation between the two about that later. She turns her comm back on in time for Anakin to start boasting to Jacen and, distracted, run into an asteroid. There's a few panicked moments where he's not responding to calls, and he finally says it was an amazing ride. Jaina realizes it's bravado, then, when she reminds him that he beat Jacen's time -- he responded "Who cares?"
Leia realizes the same thing, and starts to call Jaina in without letting her take a run. Jaina switches comm channels and pretends she didn't hear, starting the run. She chooses to go in at full speed, contrary to the typical approach of going in slowly. It's a duration test, not distance, so it makes sense to go slowly rather than push your ability to react to new asteroids quickly. But Jaina's disobeying her mother and doesn't want anything to stop her. . . and immediately thinks she's made a mistake. Cue extremely chaotic continuous narrow evasion of asteroid after asteroid. She's feeling the pattern of the asteroids as much as seeing them, and starts going "nose into the wind," just plunging headlong into the clusters. (Elsewhere: Leia is disapproving because NJO wants to build up unnecessary mother-daughter friction between the two, while Han and mentor Mara Jade are proud and encouraging.)
At four minutes, the observers announce she's gotten herself worked into an "unbreathable pattern," which of course is just a narrative tool for OH MY GOD SHE DID THE IMPOSSIBLE ANYWAY. Her instruments are all screeching and blinking at her. Instead of using the shields as a protection against inevitable collision, she uses it to deliberately ricochet herself through the cluster, treating her ship like a bouncing ball and using the force to time firing the repulsor. (Elsewhere R.A. Salvator is making Threepio ask if what she just did was good, AS IF IT WASN'T CANON THAT HE CALCULATES HOW HARD IT IS TO PILOT ASTEROID BELTS. Lando is starting to give his crew instructions to start broadcasting her performance across the planet, and Han's excited because that means BETTING. Kyp's watching, too, now.)
Jaina feels a pressure building over time, until finally her concentration starts to fail and she nicks an asteroid just enough to nudge her into clipping a second one. She goes into a full-on career, to fast to parse the images flashing in front of her and hitting asteroid after asteroid until she flies free.
She works hard to stabilize her flight after she's clear, and everything is silent -- until she finally sees the timer. She managed twenty seven minutes, twenty seven seconds. (Eat it Kyp.) When she gets towed in, She starts talking with the family about how it felt to center herself in the Force, and Jacen and Anakin quickly appropriate the victor for their argument about whether it's all about the Force or all about the skills she's honed as a pilot. She manages to make herself chuckle at them being idiots.
Kyp swings by and compliments her flying. He says he'll have to fly all over again to take the lead back. But later, because he has to go off-world and do some business with his "squadron." It isn't anything official, just him running around applying cowboy diplomacy, but he extends an invitation for the Solo kids to join in. They proceed to all argue about whether or not Jedi should concern themselves with stopping smugglers, a difficult argument because smugglers were hugely important to the Jedi at a time when the Empire ruled and Jedi were hunted -- and also their dad was one and they were instrumental to the rebellion. But it's different now that there's a fair and legitimate government in power. They part with Jaina and Kyp doing a bit more rival banter, and the kids watch Kyp's squadron launch.
Time for the next stage of the competition: Lando notes there's a completely different leader board for the two-seated TIE bombers they've modified. No Jedi on it, and Luke thinks Mara might be tempted, but she says she already made her run -- she's satisfied with a vicarious experience through her apprentice. Lando's disappointed he won't get their famous names in his competition. He tries Han and Leia, then Han and Chewie; Han tries passing it off as a kid's game, until Lando points out who IS at the top of the leader board. Some Bothan and Sulluston pair who are more scam artists than smugglers. There's some bro-insult jokes between Han and Chewie, and they finally agree.
The kids agree Han and Chewie will blow the previous duo piloting record out of the water, but think they're somewhat handicapped without the force.
The moment they're in the asteroid belt, Han's giving terrified screams and all sorts of other comic relief, in part because by squeezing a wookie into a TIE fighter, they've got Chewie elbowing Han in the head over and over. But the comm is off, so for all that it sounds hilarious, the comic relief maneuvers LOOK brilliant, and Han manages to collect himself to give cool little replies when Lando calls him with observations.
But then there's problems with the equipment. Han starts calling for the time, because the chrono isn't running on the fighter, and answers aren't getting through to them. Lando tries shrugging it off as just a communication problem, until Leia forces him to admit it means they also lack the repulsor shields that's supposed to make this safe. Luke runs out of the room.
Meanwhile, Han's finally calming down and is working out a clever plan with Chewie to use the shields to skip off a few asteroids. They end up ramming it instead, losing the right solar wing. They spin out of control and disappear from the sensors. Luke grabs another fighter and manages to find them as the shields get brought back up. He finds them landed on an asteroid, and calls it in. Another ship gets sent in to tow them out. Lando comms to Luke that if they ignore the time spent babysitting Han and Chewie, and Luke needs to do is stay in there eleven more minutes to beat Jaina's record. He just leaves.
There's some discussion between Lando and Luke about the ramifications if they can finish perfecting the off-ship shielding and give starfighters capital ship-strength shields, with Luke concerned about the psyche of pilots should the system fail and they lose their safety net. Turns out Chewie and Han's time on-sensor ties exactly with their smuggler rivals. Chewie objects, and because you should let the wookie win, Lando scrambles and decides surely they can add five seconds to their time to account for the time it took them to manage getting their fighter on that asteroid.
Received: Day 341, morning
Form: comes in the form of small black cookies -- they're rich double chocolate. 1 use, obvs.
Summary: The Solo-Skywalker family competes in Lando's Folly, an asteroid belt run using TIE fighters outfitted with repulsor shields.
--
The Solo-Skywalker family is visiting Lando at his latest flaky business investment! Aside from shipping freighters, he's set up a bit of a side entertainment racket: they're learning about it in a monitoring room showing shots of an asteroid belt that's been dubbed Lando's Folly. He's explaining that trying to mine most asteroids isn't actually profitable, but the ones that are profitable are jackpots. They're using old-design Imperial TIE fighters. The older members of the family are displeased because EMPIRE but Jaina's intrigued because they're nimble little things. He explains to her that they've mapped out "particularly nasty" sections and asks if she'd like to try.
There's prep time, but practically the next thing she knows, she's listening to technicians explaining the modifications they've made to the controls. Unlike regular TIE fighters, these are outfitted with a repulser shield to help it bounce off asteroids instead of simply smash into the rocks; the technicians say early on most of the pilots would end up in a series of ricochets until they inevitably failed to set it up right and would go crashing out of the belt. There's been no fatalities, but most end up unconscious and one almost died. It's been tweaked and by now if you crash into an asteroid, it should just be "the spin of your life."
The shields, it turns out, are powered by the nearby space station, rather than the starfighter itself. This is a surprise, because the militaries of the Imperial Remnant and the New Republic both want to perfect this technology; there's silent speculation that this is going to be the real gold mine for Lando's operation. The fighters are also outfitted with hyperdrives, which is less impressive because Jaina was doing that to TIE fighters when she was twelve. (Luke manages to still be impressed, though, because Luke.)
All three of the Solo kids take test runs in the fighters, including a deliberate half-speed crash into a mountainside to get accustomed to how the repulsor shields work. But getting to do that much isn't satisfying: she remembers seeing a posting board listing the top pilots for time navigating the belt before getting bounced out by collisions. She recognized Miko Reglia at seventh place, and big dumb sexy Kyp Durron is the current champion at eleven minutes and thirteen seconds. Miko is Kyp's apprentice.
Jacen takes the competitive run first, relying purely on a Force meditation and managing five minutes in the belt before getting knocked out. Jaina can feel in the twin bond that he's shaken up by the asteroid hit but otherwise fine. That will get him on the leader board, if not exactly high.
Anakin goes next, and Jaina recognizes a bit of a philosophical fight resurfacing between the two: where Jacen relied on the Force almost exclusively, Anakin relies almost entirely on his physical senses. Jaina turns off her comm while Anakin squeals in delight, and starts focusing on finding her center, her calm spot in the Force, and testing the controls to try getting a bit more familiar with it.
The next call she gets is from the ground controller. Anakin surpassed Jacen -- she anticipates a "fun" conversation between the two about that later. She turns her comm back on in time for Anakin to start boasting to Jacen and, distracted, run into an asteroid. There's a few panicked moments where he's not responding to calls, and he finally says it was an amazing ride. Jaina realizes it's bravado, then, when she reminds him that he beat Jacen's time -- he responded "Who cares?"
Leia realizes the same thing, and starts to call Jaina in without letting her take a run. Jaina switches comm channels and pretends she didn't hear, starting the run. She chooses to go in at full speed, contrary to the typical approach of going in slowly. It's a duration test, not distance, so it makes sense to go slowly rather than push your ability to react to new asteroids quickly. But Jaina's disobeying her mother and doesn't want anything to stop her. . . and immediately thinks she's made a mistake. Cue extremely chaotic continuous narrow evasion of asteroid after asteroid. She's feeling the pattern of the asteroids as much as seeing them, and starts going "nose into the wind," just plunging headlong into the clusters. (Elsewhere: Leia is disapproving because NJO wants to build up unnecessary mother-daughter friction between the two, while Han and mentor Mara Jade are proud and encouraging.)
At four minutes, the observers announce she's gotten herself worked into an "unbreathable pattern," which of course is just a narrative tool for OH MY GOD SHE DID THE IMPOSSIBLE ANYWAY. Her instruments are all screeching and blinking at her. Instead of using the shields as a protection against inevitable collision, she uses it to deliberately ricochet herself through the cluster, treating her ship like a bouncing ball and using the force to time firing the repulsor. (Elsewhere R.A. Salvator is making Threepio ask if what she just did was good, AS IF IT WASN'T CANON THAT HE CALCULATES HOW HARD IT IS TO PILOT ASTEROID BELTS. Lando is starting to give his crew instructions to start broadcasting her performance across the planet, and Han's excited because that means BETTING. Kyp's watching, too, now.)
Jaina feels a pressure building over time, until finally her concentration starts to fail and she nicks an asteroid just enough to nudge her into clipping a second one. She goes into a full-on career, to fast to parse the images flashing in front of her and hitting asteroid after asteroid until she flies free.
She works hard to stabilize her flight after she's clear, and everything is silent -- until she finally sees the timer. She managed twenty seven minutes, twenty seven seconds. (Eat it Kyp.) When she gets towed in, She starts talking with the family about how it felt to center herself in the Force, and Jacen and Anakin quickly appropriate the victor for their argument about whether it's all about the Force or all about the skills she's honed as a pilot. She manages to make herself chuckle at them being idiots.
Kyp swings by and compliments her flying. He says he'll have to fly all over again to take the lead back. But later, because he has to go off-world and do some business with his "squadron." It isn't anything official, just him running around applying cowboy diplomacy, but he extends an invitation for the Solo kids to join in. They proceed to all argue about whether or not Jedi should concern themselves with stopping smugglers, a difficult argument because smugglers were hugely important to the Jedi at a time when the Empire ruled and Jedi were hunted -- and also their dad was one and they were instrumental to the rebellion. But it's different now that there's a fair and legitimate government in power. They part with Jaina and Kyp doing a bit more rival banter, and the kids watch Kyp's squadron launch.
Time for the next stage of the competition: Lando notes there's a completely different leader board for the two-seated TIE bombers they've modified. No Jedi on it, and Luke thinks Mara might be tempted, but she says she already made her run -- she's satisfied with a vicarious experience through her apprentice. Lando's disappointed he won't get their famous names in his competition. He tries Han and Leia, then Han and Chewie; Han tries passing it off as a kid's game, until Lando points out who IS at the top of the leader board. Some Bothan and Sulluston pair who are more scam artists than smugglers. There's some bro-insult jokes between Han and Chewie, and they finally agree.
The kids agree Han and Chewie will blow the previous duo piloting record out of the water, but think they're somewhat handicapped without the force.
The moment they're in the asteroid belt, Han's giving terrified screams and all sorts of other comic relief, in part because by squeezing a wookie into a TIE fighter, they've got Chewie elbowing Han in the head over and over. But the comm is off, so for all that it sounds hilarious, the comic relief maneuvers LOOK brilliant, and Han manages to collect himself to give cool little replies when Lando calls him with observations.
But then there's problems with the equipment. Han starts calling for the time, because the chrono isn't running on the fighter, and answers aren't getting through to them. Lando tries shrugging it off as just a communication problem, until Leia forces him to admit it means they also lack the repulsor shields that's supposed to make this safe. Luke runs out of the room.
Meanwhile, Han's finally calming down and is working out a clever plan with Chewie to use the shields to skip off a few asteroids. They end up ramming it instead, losing the right solar wing. They spin out of control and disappear from the sensors. Luke grabs another fighter and manages to find them as the shields get brought back up. He finds them landed on an asteroid, and calls it in. Another ship gets sent in to tow them out. Lando comms to Luke that if they ignore the time spent babysitting Han and Chewie, and Luke needs to do is stay in there eleven more minutes to beat Jaina's record. He just leaves.
There's some discussion between Lando and Luke about the ramifications if they can finish perfecting the off-ship shielding and give starfighters capital ship-strength shields, with Luke concerned about the psyche of pilots should the system fail and they lose their safety net. Turns out Chewie and Han's time on-sensor ties exactly with their smuggler rivals. Chewie objects, and because you should let the wookie win, Lando scrambles and decides surely they can add five seconds to their time to account for the time it took them to manage getting their fighter on that asteroid.