Present!

Crap, I’m late. This always happens when I take the Alderanian space company. Those people have no concept of time, your lucky if the flight leaves on the right day. Do you have any idea how many cups of espresso I’ve had to make sure I didn’t sleep through boarding? I race to the remaining dropship to take me to the space station. My remedial marine pilot has fallen asleep, drooling on his collar. I quickly stow my gear and sit in the copilots seats. Perking up, he looks up at me. “Welcome, I’m Private Richard Payne, but friends call me Dick for short.” Passing on the obvious comments, I smile at the Private. “Hi, I’m kinda in a hurry, could we speed this up some?” He nods, pulls out a thick dog eared binder with the title “Takeoff Procedures for Dummies” and begins flipping through.

Hmm, this bodes ill.

I plug my combat slicing deck into ships system, connect to the cortex, hunt around a bit for a dropship driver and hope for the best. As Payne peruses through the book, I lean over, flip a series of switch, place a pink sticky note on the control yoke identifying as such as well as ones that state which is port and what is starboard, in appropriately colored sticky notes, of course, then sit back in my seat.

Encouraged, Payne starts up the ship. I pick up my deck and help things along some. “Wowsers, this seems a lot easier than last time, and I’m so much further off the ground than I’ve ever been before,” the good private commented. “But if you’re doing this, Ma’am, that’s not gonna teach me nothing.” I smile reassuringly at the private, “no worries, I’m simply organizing my iTunes list, syncing my phone with Naboo Outlook, and answering a few emails. I’d never dream of depriving you of a training opportunity.” I programmed in the fastest route to the space station, sat back and hoped that Payne didn’t do anything spectacularly dumb to mess things up. It’s not like he’s pvt. Hudson.

We grace I’m sure he didn’t know he had, Payne navigated the dropship onto the space station, drawing a round of applause. As I raced to level 12, I wondered if I’d inadvertently just helped an incompetent man earn his wings. Oh well, not my service or my galaxy. As I head toward the pods, I see a Starbuckers. Hmm, another coffee wouldn’t be a bad idea. My incessant twitching, a dirty look and an impatient sight get me to the front of the line. I grab the latte and run. I find a pod, hop in, press the eject button and head towards the slalom course. With the focus that only large amounts of caffeine or Adderol can provide, I steer the craft toward the first of the six buoys. While the little vessel looks sleek, it handles like a cantankerous Yugo. I’d forgotten that one of the criticisms of LGS1 had been the poor equipment quality. You’d think that the trip on the dropship would clued me in on the fact that the issue hadn’t been dealt with. I dodge the six buoys, slingshot around and head back towards the station.

I wonder how well the brakes on this badboy work.

Not well

I end up circling around the moon a few times to reduce my velocity then head back towards the station. I bring the craft in, land my Yugo in one of the designated compact stops and jump out. “Lt. Cmdr Oneida present!”