Star Wars_ The Black Fleet Crisis 03_ Tyrant's Test - Michael P. Kube-McDowell [58]
Akanah stood on the dockwalk looking up at a sleek curving hull bearing the name Jump for Joy in a flowing royal blue script. It was the best starship in port, at least for Akanah’s purposes—a Twomi Skyfire, barely a year old. Six places, the lines of a fighter, and the engines of a racer.
If she was going to leave Utharis—if she was going to leave Luke behind—the means to do so was before her.
She had already been aboard and assured herself that the pilot assist system was the equal of the luxury appointments. Autolanding, autonavigation, crash and collision-avoidance overrides, voice-assisted preflight—despite an advertising campaign heavy on images of danger and adventure, the Skyfire had been designed to make the occasional pilot comfortable at the controls.
More importantly, Jump for Joy should be able to outrun any other ship in port, except perhaps the snub fighters belonging to the Utharis Sector Patrol. That kind of speed could be useful in a war zone. Luke had already totted up Mud Sloth’s shortcomings in combat, and they were numerous enough to give Akanah pause.
She moved a step to her right and looked down the side of the sprint. A pretty ship, she thought, and sighed. And it would be so easy to take it.
But leaving now meant abandoning the greater part of her purpose with her goal in sight but not yet achieved. Luke was open to her now—beginning to understand, beginning to change. More time. All I need now is more time. If she was there when the next test came, she might see the transformation. Luke was that close—aware of the flow of the Current, almost able to read it, nearly ready to join it—
“It’s a beauty, isn’t it?” a man said, coming up beside her. He was wiping his hands on a cloth, as though he had been doing some work somewhere out of sight.
Akanah had felt his presence moments before he spoke, but allowed herself to startle girlishly. “Oh! I didn’t see you. Yes, it’s beautiful—it looks like it’s ready to leap into the air at any moment.”
Even in the darkness, Akanah could feel the man beaming with pride. “Would you like to see the inside?”
Akanah laughed at him silently, realizing his intent. “I don’t think so,” she said. “I need to be getting home.”
He leaned toward her conspiratorially. “Have you ever had sex in hyperspace?”
This time she could not contain her bubbling laugh of bemusement. “Yes,” she said, and melted away into the night.
The skids of the fleet launch kissed the plating of the flight deck so gently that Plat Mallar could scarcely feel the vibration under him.
“Contact,” he said, reaching overhead to the auxiliary control panel. “Grapples on. Systems to standby. Shutting down engines.”
“All right,” said the check pilot. “That’s good enough. Come on out, Mallar, and I’ll give you your scores.”
With a sigh of relief, Mallar released the double harness with a sharp poke of his fingers. Climbing out of the flight couch, he made his way to the egress hatch at the back of the simulator’s cabin.
He had just flown an imaginary approach and landing to the number two flight deck of the carrier Volant, his tenth exercise of that session and his eighteenth of the day. His flight suit was dripping with perspiration, his shoulders aching, his feet half numb from being confined in flight boots that weren’t yet broken in.
The launch was the larger of the two boats used for intrafleet travel and had proven the harder for Plat to master. A fleet gig was similar in size to an X-wing or TIE interceptor, and he had had little trouble getting one in and out of the enclosed space of a combat flight deck. But a fleet launch was two and a half times longer and a full meter taller than a gig, and Plat