Fanclub **Guardians of Light: The EUC Jedi ~ ~ Close Your Eyes... Feel It... the Light. ~ ~**

Master Chetan has struck the proverbial head on the nail. . . or however that human saying goes. *strokes purring cat in lost contemplation. . .why are they so fuzzy?*

I am looking forward to it! And I shall possibly have to do something to make this up to you, and the others for my inattention.

 

Why wouldn't they be.

 

Is that what popped into your head, CJ? I went straight to Blofeld.

 

Kitties are all that are ever in my head Sarge. They're just so fuzzy.

 

Pardon me, Master Trevalus, I lost my bearing. Forgive me.
I forget how busy the council makes you all. Mitth_Fisto

I look forward to whatever it is you have planned!!

 

Padawan Training - IC
Temple Hangar

Time to test those piloting skills of which you seem to be quite confident...while your rich life experiences and previous set of skills are an asset, the time has come for you to allow your dependence on them to fall into the background of your awareness of life. Instead you must learn to allow yourself to give precedence to the Force. Through your surrender and receptivity to its guidance it will take control and make your decisions for you. By doing so, again and again, moment to moment, this spark within you that has been lit during your time of meditation will turn into a steady flame. It will be the light that will invisibly assist your every action, the intuition that will illuminate each thought.

The Master and apprentice approach a pair of well worn Jedi Starfighters in the Temple hangar bay. Your astromech has the coordinates of the location of your next exercise. You will navigate an asteroid field located on the outskirts of the same system as Saridona Prime. I will shadow you in my ship, following in your wake. I do hope that's a real lightsaber on your belt and that the rest of your padawan field provisions are in order.


OOC: Chart a path through the asteroids infusing your new skills with your old and keep me within view behind you. This is part one. Sarge

 

Masters, I'm sorry but I may be absent from the Jedi Council Forums for a little while due to some things I have to deal with in real life. I should be back soon.

 

Kick the tires and light the fires, Master Ananta Chetan. Launching in 3...2...

(Question, do these fighters have hyperdrive rings? I'm guessing not, since we're not leaving the system.)



^Sarge in his natural habitat

 

Let's see what you got Sarge!

OOC: I look forward to following this..

Come back soon SkywalkerStyle !!

 

Don't worry, we'll still be here when you find time Master Tehanis!

 

It took some careful pressure and a judicious shove or two, but I managed to fit my duffel bag into the baggage compartment of the Starfighter and push the hatch closed. I probably was packing more gear than I needed, but I'd rather have stuff that I don't want than need stuff that I don't have, especially when I wasn't hauling it in a backpack. Time to start the preflight checks.

I'm not familiar with the Delta 7 Aethersprite, so I kept the checklist in hand and ticked off the items one by one. First thing was an access hatch to an equipment bay in the ship's belly, where I instantly spotted a drop of hydraulic fluid on a hose clamp. Not a big deal, with most hydraulic systems a little seepage just means there is fluid in the reservoir, and if nothing is leaking you'd better fill it up cuz it's empty. My multi-tool twisted the hose clamp nearly 180 degrees before it felt snug and tight, and I wiped away the drop with the cuff of my flight suit. I traced the hose to a control valve, which tied into the lateral attitude control thrusters.

"Hey, copilot," I called to the astromech droid welded into the wing. "Cycle the attitude control system for me, I need to check it for leaks."

The system whirred and clicked several times. No more seepage. Next item on the checklist...

The preflight only took a few minutes. There's not much to the Delta 7, just a cockpit on top of a couple of engines with a pair of light lasers, and minimal navigation and sensor equipment. The pilot is supposed to handle those functions with his own abilities.

"You ready to go, copilot?"

"Thbbbppptt!"

"What's the matter with being called copilot? I was copilot for years. It's an important and prestigious line of work. That's what I was told by all the pilots who hired me at minimum wage to be their copilot."

"Beep doo wee doop wirry?"

"No, you can't be flight engineer, that was my first flying job ever, I'm the one who always answers to flight engineer. Come on, let's get this antique in the air."

The engines started readily and warmed up quickly. In a minute I was hovering on the repulsors half a meter off the pavement. I glanced over at Master Ananta Chetan's fighter. He gave me thumbs up and waved me forward. I checked the comm frequency and pressed the transmit button.

"Saridona Control, this is Aethersprite training flight Venture 1, formation of two, ready to depart on flight plan as filed. Give us the word, and we'll make like a bird."

Control's response crackled in my headset, "Venture 1 flight of two, cleared for departure as filed. You have my consent to leave the cement." Wise guy, I thought. Then I cracked open the throttles.

With a smooth hissing roar and a solid boot in my back, the Aethersprite lunged forward and upward. There's something to be said for lightweight fighters with minimal systems and equipment; they accelerate, climb, and turn like nobody's business. Fun, fun, fun!



Climbing to pattern altitude, I turned and looked back for Master Chetan's fighter, which was trailing me at a comfortable distance. I banked into a sweeping turn toward course, and caught a glimpse of sun sparking on a lake below us. That's one of the prettiest sights in my world, and seldom fails to bring a smile to my face.



We pulled up into a nearly vertical climb, headed almost straight into the sun. I had a plotted a course that would take us past the star, giving us a gravity boost on our way by as we made for the destination coordinates on the edge of the system.

Clearing the atmosphere, I felt out the hand controls. They were the lightest and most sensitive I had ever flown. I almost overcontrolled and nearly got into a pilot-induced-oscillation before I got the hang of it.

Only minutes later, we were closing in on the sun. Time to focus and fly right. Flying in close would give us a bigger downhill boost, but too close would overwhelm our shields with a lethal dose of radiation. And to make matters more interesting, this star was in a period of high activity for sunspots and solar flares, which could send radiation levels skyrocketing. I caressed the controls, looking for the best balance of speed and safety as I adjusted the course. The star was getting too close to look at, even through tinted visors, so I shut my eyes and let its light into my mind.

The star glowed brightly, burning and roiling with the fires of fusion. Yes, it was definitely not in a tranquil state, pressure was building, and I could sense the potential for a solar flare. I nudged the controls, giving us a little more room, and tweaked the power balance between engines and shields.

The power balance made for an interesting technical problem. If I put the engines at maximum power, I'd be out of the radiation zone in minimal time, but the shields wouldn't have enough power to keep me safe. And if I set the shields at maximum, there'd be less power available for the engines, I'd lose speed, spend too much time in the rad zone, and I'd still get a lethal dose. I had to choose a compromise setting, gradually increasing power to the shields as I neared the star.

The star was a boiling mass of hydrogen, bubbling like a nuclear stewpot. Even with my eyes closed, the light was nearly blinding. And it wasn't just plain light, I sensed the glow of life in there! Some kind of extremophiles, things that live in places where life is impossible to most of us. I'd have to ask Master Chetan about that later.

Pressure was still building in a spot relatively below us. I tweaked our course upward slightly. A minute later, the pressure blew out into a solar flare, white-hot ejecta streamed below us in a river of starfire. I adjusted course again, giving us a little more distance from it, and checked the angle of the shields. Then we were clear, accelerating away, and I could open my eyes again. Several of the gauges on my instrument panel were indicating in the yellow caution range, but none had moved up to the red danger zone, and they were quickly settling back toward the green arcs.

"Copilot, status check."

"Bedoop."

"Glad to hear it, co." I pushed the transmit button. "Venture 2, this Venture 1, I'm moving out of the tanning booth now. I don't think I'll get any cool mutant superpowers from the radiation."

The next hours passed quietly. We soared past several planets and moons, picking up more speed by dipping in and out of their gravity wells, getting as close as we could without scraping paint, and being careful not to get into the outer fringes of atmosphere of the worlds blessed with air. I drank a lot of water, suspecting I might be a little dehydrated from the heat of the star, and ate a power bar. Then we were approaching the asteroid field.

All right, break time is over, stow the loose gear, tighten the harness, and check the controls, roll axis is good, pitch axis is good, yaw axis... yaw axis! Nothing! The hose clamp must have come loose. It got overheated, and now it breaks loose. A Jedi isn't even supposed to know the words I'm thinking right now.

Without yaw control thrusters, I can't skid the nose of the ship to left or right. I can still steer fine, I just have to roll it the way I want to go and then use the pitch controls, so I'm still safe and in control, but there's no way I'm going into an asteroid field without full control of my ship. This isn't going to look good at the post flight debrief. PUDU!!!

Calm down now, it's not the end of the world. I have tools, I have skills, and I'm wearing a vacuum rated flight suit under the Padawan robes, so I'll just have to pressure check my helmet and go outside and fix it. Maybe a Jedi Master can breathe vacuum while he's EVA, but I'm not going to try that today. This will cost us some time, but we have time. Better throttle back now.

Throttle. No, throttles! This ship has two engines, side-by-side! I can steer with the throttles!



I put my left hand on top of the pair of throttle controls and twisted it to the left, pushing the right throttle forward and pulling the left one back. The nose yawed left. I twisted back and forth, getting the feel of my improvised control system. Good enough, and reasonably intuitive, if not perfectly ergonomic. I pushed both throttles forward and accelerated into a gap between two boulders that appeared just where I expected them. No problem. I can do this.

Full power to forward deflectors, and then ignore the cockpit, all attention outside where the danger is. Rock spun past, fast enough that they should have been blurred, but I saw each one clearly, and it seemed like I knew right where to look for each one before I saw it. Even with my awkward yaw control system, flying full speed through the asteroids was easy. It was fun. It was a game, and I was winning!

I rolled out of a vertical right bank and a massive planetoid appeared dead ahead. My muscles tensed, contracting to pull back on the controls and send me soaring easily over it, when I realized there was another enormous boulder just above the first one, and there was no possible way to go over both of them. I instantly shoved the nose down instead.

The planetoid loomed over the fighter's canopy and time slowed to a crawl. The cratered surface was reaching down for me and I was holding my breath, waiting for an endless split instant of time for the stone sky to smash into the top of my canopy. Then it was gone behind me and I was shooting clear of the rocks.

Great flying, hot shot, I thought to myself. Don't get cocky.

Now I should be close to the destination coordinates. As long as I don't get lost on the way there, I should be golden.

Spoiler

Inflight pictures taken by me. That instant with the asteroids going over my head was inspired by the time I stupidly flew a Cessna up a winding river below the treetops and unexpectedly encountered power lines right in front of me. Time really does seem to slow down in those moments. I still remember the endless instant as the wires disappeared overhead and I was wondering if they'd rip my rudder off.

 

OOC:

 

Padawans, as we return to Saridona, I'd like to award you some points based on your work over the last month and congratulate you all on a job well done. Good luck in your future trials, I've had a lot of fun with these ones

The Vanguard - 20pts
ConservativeJedi321 - 17pts
Jar-Jar Binks - 16pts
Thane kyrell - 11pts
Anedon - 11pts
Psychenous - 8pts

Note that the last 3 still have a chance to earn points for building their lightsabers when they're ready, but those points will be assigned by their respective Masters as I'm handing you back to your usual Masters.

Ananta Chetan Mitth_Fisto Bardan_Jusik

 

It has been a privilege and an honor to have learned from your teachings Jedi Master Rebecca_Daniels

I hope you can find the time to visit us again soon.

May the Force be with you.

 

The Council would like to recognize Knight Eira Dryn for the fantastic job she has done as our Guest Instructor over the last month and awards her 20 FP's in gratitude for her efforts on Illum. Rebecca_Daniels

 

Hi

 

Why, hello there.

 

Some playful foreshadowing...




You should begin to prepare yourself.
More to come.
ConservativeJedi321

 

*Looks at signature*

Hm, that's a lot of force points.

*Bows* I am most appreciative for your training Rebecca_Daniels

EDIT: I will do just that Matser Ananta Chetan!

*starts combing seaweed braid and rummaging through closet for formal robes*

 

I piggy back on what Jar-Jar Binks said Knight Dryn, thank you so much for your guidance and wisdom shared. It was a privilege! Rebecca_Daniels

**@ConservativeJedi321

 

Looks like you aren't far behind me The Vanguard.

 

It's a long road ahead, and we're all just getting started.