Jaina Solo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sticksofthejedi) wrote2011-07-28 09:09 pm
sticksofthejedi) wrote2011-07-28 09:09 pm
Entry tags:
Memory 9
Memory: Jaina is using piloting exercises with Luke as a way to avoid dealing with her issues with Jacen.
Received: Day 69
Form: Team stone.
Summary: There's something brewing, and the government's gearing up for a new conflict, so Jaina's decided to become an active starfighter pilot again. Meanwhile, through her twinbond--and/or Jacen's interference with the twinbond--Jaina's picked up that something is up with him and they're having a falling out. So she decides that instead of dealing with her problems, she'll just bury herself in work. FEELINGS, WHAT FEELINGS. I DON'T HAVE FEELINGS. SHUT UP.
Jaina's perfectly conscious of the fact that she's just trying not to think of Jacen. More practice using danger sense to evade. XJ7 just refers to yet another new model of X-wing.
SQUADRON TRAINING SECTION AIRSPACE, CENTAX 2.
The XJ7 below Luke jinked to port and fell away beneath him with astonishing speed. Even for him, Jaina Solo was a serious challenge in aerial combat.
Or maybe I’m slowing down.
Luke throttled his own XJ7 into a dive, plummeting into the moon’s canyons in pursuit of Jaina. He’d thought she’d had enough flight time recently not to need to sharpen her skills, but when Jaina said she was returning to active service, she meant it. She went on exercises with the squadron just like the new intake, colonel or not.
It was a live-fire exercise, too. Some of the pilots had never been shot at for real. It tended to change their perspective of warfare.
Beneath them on the valley floor, a droid anti-aircraft battery let loose with ion cannons. The red bolts of energy soaring up at him seemed to merge into a single field with the red halos of the XJ7’s engines as Jaina zipped between the bolts, rolling instantly through 180 degrees to narrow the fighter’s profile and sending a stream of fire into the ion cannons.
She leveled out at the bottom of the canyon behind the battery, and Luke dropped down behind her, shaving the canyon floor so closely that the downdraft from the XJ7 threw up a cloud of tiny pebbles that hammered under the fuselage.
Luke sent a volley of fire after her, aiming a few degrees wide of her starboard wings. The canyon wall spat plumes of pulverized rock in her path, and she skimmed over it.
She broke comm silence, which wasn’t like her. “Don’t play, Uncle. It won’t help me.”
He realized he could have taken a serious shot and he still might not have hit her. But he couldn’t fire in earnest on his niece, even if he knew she could almost certainly evade it. It was the almost he didn’t like.
“I’m breaking,” he said, and climbed sharply to level out at a cruising altitude. “See you back at the mess.”
Centax 2 was a sterile moon with the usual sprawl of military facilities arranged like a warehouse floor covered in boxes. The base would win no prizes for architecture. If war broke out for real—and Luke always found the for real proviso painfully ironic—then it would switch overnight from a training squadron to an operational air station. The switch seemed close to being thrown. Luke lifted the canopy of the XJ7 and climbed out of the cockpit to slide down the ladder wheeled into position by ground crew.
I used to do that a lot faster, too.
He waited at the entrance to the mess until Jaina’s fighter swept into the hangar on repulsor power and settled in the bay next to his. When she slid out and took off her helmet, her face was taut and anxious.
“You’re up to speed,” Luke said comfortingly, walking toward the doors to get her to follow him. “Are we allowed to wear flight suits in the mess?”
Jaina managed a smile and indicated her own orange suit. “Don’t worry, I’m the colonel. I’ll provide top cover.”
It was the first chance Luke had grabbed since the Corellian internment row to talk to Jaina alone. She radiated misery. Anxiety about “skills fade” and being “fit for role”—phrases that had peppered her conversation rather too liberally in recent days to convince Luke—was good tech talk for the sake of the squadron, nothing more. She was Jacen’s twin. Whatever was happening, it was happening to her more acutely than the rest of the family.
“After you,” said Luke.
Received: Day 69
Form: Team stone.
Summary: There's something brewing, and the government's gearing up for a new conflict, so Jaina's decided to become an active starfighter pilot again. Meanwhile, through her twinbond--and/or Jacen's interference with the twinbond--Jaina's picked up that something is up with him and they're having a falling out. So she decides that instead of dealing with her problems, she'll just bury herself in work. FEELINGS, WHAT FEELINGS. I DON'T HAVE FEELINGS. SHUT UP.
Jaina's perfectly conscious of the fact that she's just trying not to think of Jacen. More practice using danger sense to evade. XJ7 just refers to yet another new model of X-wing.
SQUADRON TRAINING SECTION AIRSPACE, CENTAX 2.
The XJ7 below Luke jinked to port and fell away beneath him with astonishing speed. Even for him, Jaina Solo was a serious challenge in aerial combat.
Or maybe I’m slowing down.
Luke throttled his own XJ7 into a dive, plummeting into the moon’s canyons in pursuit of Jaina. He’d thought she’d had enough flight time recently not to need to sharpen her skills, but when Jaina said she was returning to active service, she meant it. She went on exercises with the squadron just like the new intake, colonel or not.
It was a live-fire exercise, too. Some of the pilots had never been shot at for real. It tended to change their perspective of warfare.
Beneath them on the valley floor, a droid anti-aircraft battery let loose with ion cannons. The red bolts of energy soaring up at him seemed to merge into a single field with the red halos of the XJ7’s engines as Jaina zipped between the bolts, rolling instantly through 180 degrees to narrow the fighter’s profile and sending a stream of fire into the ion cannons.
She leveled out at the bottom of the canyon behind the battery, and Luke dropped down behind her, shaving the canyon floor so closely that the downdraft from the XJ7 threw up a cloud of tiny pebbles that hammered under the fuselage.
Luke sent a volley of fire after her, aiming a few degrees wide of her starboard wings. The canyon wall spat plumes of pulverized rock in her path, and she skimmed over it.
She broke comm silence, which wasn’t like her. “Don’t play, Uncle. It won’t help me.”
He realized he could have taken a serious shot and he still might not have hit her. But he couldn’t fire in earnest on his niece, even if he knew she could almost certainly evade it. It was the almost he didn’t like.
“I’m breaking,” he said, and climbed sharply to level out at a cruising altitude. “See you back at the mess.”
Centax 2 was a sterile moon with the usual sprawl of military facilities arranged like a warehouse floor covered in boxes. The base would win no prizes for architecture. If war broke out for real—and Luke always found the for real proviso painfully ironic—then it would switch overnight from a training squadron to an operational air station. The switch seemed close to being thrown. Luke lifted the canopy of the XJ7 and climbed out of the cockpit to slide down the ladder wheeled into position by ground crew.
I used to do that a lot faster, too.
He waited at the entrance to the mess until Jaina’s fighter swept into the hangar on repulsor power and settled in the bay next to his. When she slid out and took off her helmet, her face was taut and anxious.
“You’re up to speed,” Luke said comfortingly, walking toward the doors to get her to follow him. “Are we allowed to wear flight suits in the mess?”
Jaina managed a smile and indicated her own orange suit. “Don’t worry, I’m the colonel. I’ll provide top cover.”
It was the first chance Luke had grabbed since the Corellian internment row to talk to Jaina alone. She radiated misery. Anxiety about “skills fade” and being “fit for role”—phrases that had peppered her conversation rather too liberally in recent days to convince Luke—was good tech talk for the sake of the squadron, nothing more. She was Jacen’s twin. Whatever was happening, it was happening to her more acutely than the rest of the family.
“After you,” said Luke.