#

Dav was bored.

He’d thought that nothing could possibly compare to flying a ship through the stars. But after the first five minutes he realized flying in a straight line could be very much like watching paint dry on a wall.

Dav made another little mini stretch in his chair. More out of boredom than a genuine desire to ensure efficiency, he had his ship’s scanner do another systems check on his fighter, and then had the scanner run another on his four wingmen.

Dav had to chuckle as he heard the slightest cough and verbal nudge from the others. Their ships let them know when they were being scanned, and Slak usually had the most cutting remarks about Dav looking under the hood of his speeder, or any of a number of other metaphors that apparently had racier connotations when used by Corellians.

They broke atmosphere in the first fifteen minutes, and continued a gently-angled descent for the next half hour. Finally, the scanner began chirping happily just before a dark speck appeared in the distance among the clouds.

“Visual on destination,” Hublin said over the comm.

As they grew closer, Dav saw it was a cross between a space station and a garrison outpost. He’d heard of places like this, but never seen one except in holobooks. Cities that expended tremendous amounts of power each day in an effort to stay floating high above a planet’s inhospitable surface did so for various reasons. Some mined valuable gasses from the clouds of the local atmosphere, some acted as military outposts, keeping an eye on unreliable populations or trade routes known to be frequented by smugglers and pirates.

No one answered Hublin- there was no need. A few minutes more and Dav could see more details about the city. The landing pads were on the higher levels, open to the air. “We’re cleared for landing,” Solo said, his voice sounding smoothly over the comm. “Both wings, put down in flight formation with mine and Hublin’s ships as right marker.”

Hublin, without making any fancy maneuvers at all, swooped his ship towards the landing pad that had the most blinking lights. A large, Lambda-class shuttle sat in the center of the pad, and there were a number of boxes made of lights in neat rows in front of and behind it.

Experienced as they now were with the sims and in their actual ships, they had no trouble bringing their fighters to a hover, and they gently set down in two neat rows on the sizable landing pad.

After a few minutes, hatches popped open and pilots disembarked and lined up in two loose lines on the landing pad.

“Arurek and Besh wing, steady up!” shouted Hublin. Ten right boots slammed to attention next to ten left boots. All of them held their flight helmets in their curled right arms with their left arms snapped to their sides, their left thumbs pointing down the seams of their black flight-suit’s pant legs.

“In the event,” Hublin began, “that you believe yourselves to be real pilots now, think again. You just managed to follow a flight path set by a computer, with Second Lieutenant Solo and I holding your collective hands the whole way. The thing to remember is this, people: Do not get cocky. You have the backing of the Empire, the greatest military machine the galaxy has ever known. But the greatest pilot I ever knew was killed in space, his body never found, after one lucky shot from a smuggler hit his fighter.

“Remember that, people, as you unwind in the cantina. All of you, however good you may be, however skilled you become, all of you are just one lucky shot away from becoming so much flotsam and jetsam, your corpse drifting forever and unmourned throughout the galaxy.”

“On that note: You are to be back here, formed up in one hour. Leave your suits on and your comms on summons in case you are needed. Aurek wing, dismissed!”

“Besh wing,” yelled Solo behind Hublin, “dismissed!”

Dav and his crew turned on their heels at Hublin’s order, snapped their right boots down and marched off. Porkin’s group did the same at Solo’s words, marching off a second or so behind them.

Dav looked at Jada and the rest, giving a small sigh. Somehow, Hublin had a way of taking the wind out of their sails when they felt especially good about completing a task.

“Hey, did he say there was a cantina?” Slak piped up.

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Cheers went up!

#

The Cantina was everything Dav thought it would be.

The one back on the Adeptus was scrubbed clean every night by servo droids. This one was dirty, smelling of week-old pilot sweat, spilled drinks and with furniture bolted into the floor in the event of an altercation.

Dav couldn't have been happier. It was the kind of place his holonovel heroes had always retired to at the end of an adventure- and his first adventure was only halfway finished.

“S’cuse me,” he said to the bartender. “Excuse me?”

The bartender, his back to Dav and the rest of the cadets, seemed to have other things on his mind.

Dav, suddenly aware that the rest of the group was watching him, felt a little angry at being ignored.

“Hey,” he said, trying not to sound obnoxious but still make himself heard over all the conversations taking place in the bar. “Hey, could you…”

He still kept pouring other drinks and mopping up imaginary spills with a nearby rag.

Jada suddenly pushed past Dav, reached over across the bar and tugged on the bartender’s shirt to get his attention.

Now the bartender turned around, facing them with a smile.

“Well now, I can tell at least one of you little critters knows her way around a bar. What’ll you have?”

“Do you…” Dav suddenly realized that the only kind of adult drink he’d ever had was from his parent’s cabinet.

“Uh-“ he said, trying to ignore the ‘you lose’ smile on Jada’s face. Suddenly, she looked more attractive that she’d ever really looked before. And he didn’t want to look foolish in front of her a second time.

“Do you…have you got any bludrink?”

“Sorry, did you say blue milk?” the bartender said loudly, his smile still in place and his eyes twinkling. Several patrons turned to look, smiles on their faces as well.

Dav looked back at his flight mates.

“Nope,” he said back to the bartender, trying to put on a swaggering air. It was time to show the cadets he was a leader, and this adult.

“No, I said bludrink. It’s a nice little thing we have on Coruscant…”

“How old are you, kid?” the bartender asked, still smiling.

“We’re all old enough to fly, fight and die for the Empire. And we rock the boat! That old enough for ya?”

Both wings cheered Dav! Still smiling, as if they’d passed some test they’d not known about, the bartender reached down. With hands made almost magical through the pouring of many drinks through the years, he held up four glasses in each hand but still managed to hit the necessary buttons on the taps. Eight glasses full of blue liquid slammed into a neat row on the bar inside of ten seconds. The cheers went up in volume as he stacked the drinks, and by the time the last cadet made it to the bar he’d put the last two drinks in the lineup.

“To Four Flight!” Dav yelled. “we rock the boat!”

“We rock the boat!” the other nine of them shouted, tipping their glasses and taking a swig of the blue liquid.

Dav, tasting the familiar soft bite of the alcohol on his tongue, suddenly had a flood of memories. He wondered how his parents were doing, and he suddenly wished he share this moment with them, too.

Some of the other cadets, like Bondo or Norrin were obviously taking their first drink ever, and spluttered at the mild, bitter taste of the stuff in their glasses. Chuckles went around, and the flight sat at a large, circular table. Talk flowed easily, and a stranger walking in on the conversation would have thought that the cadets had fought, bled and prevailed against the most dastardly space pirates the galaxy had to offer, rather than be only halfway through a mission that any experienced pilot would have seen as elementary and ridiculously simple. Dav knew as the jokes and the stories ebbed and flowed that he would remember every word, every topic of conversation, every anecdote and good-natured ribbing that took place at this moment, and that whatever missions he flew after today, this would be the one he would always remember best.

But, all too soon, the time came to return. No one was feeling brave enough

“Hey,” said the bartender before they left the bar, “you folks with Solo at all?”

“He’s our Second Lieutenant, and our wing commander!” shouted Porkins.

“Well, I’ll be. I thought that pirate-hearted little brat’d be dead by now. Good to know. You tell him I said Ayo, and to keep outta trouble.”

“Will do,” said Dav as he walked towards the exit.

“Feeling good?” Dav said to Jada. He still felt a bit of mild happiness that she’d taken the seat on his right.

“After I showed you how to get his attention back there? Sure,” Jada said with a wink, her freckles suddenly looking even more fetching in the dim light.

Dav smiled. Perhaps, just perhaps...

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TO BE CONTINUED....