Adjudicator, Shuttle Bay

It had been far too long since he had sat in a pilot’s seat. As the Chief Petty Officer slowly came to this realization as he was standing in front of the Lambda-class T4-A shuttle he was about to pilot down to Belgaroth Medical for another shipment of supplies. His co-pilot must have noticed the Mon Calamari’s elevated level of anxiety. “Bit out of your comfort zone, eh, Fishhead?”

“Yes, sir. Used to be I could handle piloting freighters, but it’s been a long while since I’ve sat in that chair. As well as this mission’s gone so far, I’m bound to screw up somewhere.”

“You doubt yourself too much. As soon as you start flying this junk heap, you’ll feel right at home again.”

“Thanks for the pep talk, boss. Flying a “junk heap” isn’t necessarily encouraging,” the Mon Calamari replied indignantly.

“Hey, at least it flies. It’s not the beauty of a starfighter, nor is there an adrenaline rush when piloting these things. Then again, what is?”

“Oh, personally? I don’t know… Cutting into a cadaver and performing an autopsy is pretty exhilarating for me, at least.” The Chief Petty Officer had regained his confidence with that statement.

The co-pilot chuckled. “You medical people and your love of cutting things open. I’ll never understand it.”

“Blowing things up isn’t quite my style. Shall we head planetside?”

“After you, boss.” They both headed up the loading ramp. Tosth took the pilot’s chair, with his human co-pilot taking the seat next to him.

“I’ll go ahead and walk you through this. First step, turn the shuttle on.”

“Ha-ha.”

“Serious. Turn the frakking thing on.”

“Yes, yes. Just give me a moment to get settled in and oriented.” He found the switch he thought controlled the engines and asked the human if that was right.

“Yep. That’s the repulsorlift drive controls. Turn that on slightly. Now move your hand to the right. There ya go. Those are the ion drive controls. Go ahead and keep a hand there. You’ll want to lift up the landing gear next.”

Fishhead found the relevant controls and flipped them. His co-pilot was right; he was beginning to pick this back up. He then lowered the wings into position and slowly eased on the ion engines to leave the hangar.

“Very nice. Turn off the repulsorlifts for the moment. Let’s have you take a quick run before we enter the atmosphere. We want you familiar with this scrap heap before we try to land.” He gave the Mon Calamari a general location to head towards.

Tosth started angling left, but it wasn’t enough to complete the turn. “Just bear down on that turn there, Fishhead. These ships can’t accelerate worth a wheep and turns slower than a comet.”

He was starting to figure that out. He made a huge effort to pull the shuttle left and finally managed it.

“Nice. A couple more turns and then we’ll descend.”

He performed the turns and finally got the hang of the immense turn radius of the shuttle. “Right. We’re ready to begin the descent. A couple quick notes. As we enter the atmosphere, the ion cannons are going off. This makes these shuttles fly even slower and turn less. You ready?”

Without giving a response, the Mon Calamari began his descent. He promptly engaged the repulsorlifts and shut down the ion drives when he received a message indicating he had entered the atmosphere. “Nice work once again, Fishhead. Now, I’ve marked our destination on the computer. Just head towards that marking nice and easy.”

About half an hour later, they were above their final destination. “Let’s make another pass around; ascend about 50 kilometers and head out about 100 kilometers so we can ensure this landing.”

He did as instructed and slowly came back through, descending closer and closer to the landing pad.

“Go ahead and start lowering the power to your repulsorlifts, kid. We’re almost down now. Nice and easy… There we go.”

Tosth brought the ship to a stop, still hovering about ten meters off the ground. “Let’s pull the wings up and engage the landing gear at full height.” He did so, and then completely disengaged the repulsorlifts.

“Not too shabby at all, kid. Bit bumpy, but other than that, went quite well. Let’s get these shuttles loaded up and we’ll have you land back into the Adjudicator to brush up your skills to par.”

OOC:

WC: 745

AAR:  Tosth pilots one of the shuttles heading for Belgaroth Medical to pick up the necessary supplies for a restocking.