fulfilling a promised lesson on the fine art of blasting things ...

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Walking back to the Millennium Falcon through the Nexus has gotten a little bit easier each time.  The first time, it took him more than an hour to get back despite the fact that his ship has always been parked about a thousand yards away from a path that leads to the forum.  The shiftable nature of this place makes no walk to and from anywhere as straightforward as it seems, but you can get used to it.

 

For a while, he cleans up the areas that he thinks both he and Verity are likely to be in for a while - the cockpit and the lounge especially, but also near the entry ramp and the living quarters.

 

He did promise lessons on how to fly and in due course, he will get her into the sky with him ... but he's still doesn't have a ton of fuel yet and the priority was always teaching her how to use the blasters.  So he's pulled four weapons out of the storage lockers, completely disassembled them and cleaned them.  He also discharges all, but one, of the plasma magazines.

 

They get placed them on top of the holochess board, which, sadly, is among one of the biggest flat surfaces available to him on the YT-1300 and then, he takes a shower and slips into a light weight pair of pants.  It seems to take a long time for him to drift off in the small bunk that he's claimed for himself.  The sound of the winter wind skips across the surface of his ship and makes a low howling sort of sound.

 

This is one of the reasons it's always preferable to put your ship in a proper hanger, but, when you're Han Solo, you work with what you got.  After a few hours he wakes up, not knowing what time it is, until he opens the entry ramp and looks outside.

 

It seems too early for her to arrive.  The sun hasn't even reached the apex of it's path yet, so he decides to lay back down.  Leaving the ramp down for her to facilitate her letting herself in. 

Comments

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Best to let him come to the knowledge of her magic very, very, gradually. When he starts to see how useful it is, he'll be inclined to be more forgiving toward it too. Probably.

"Fire it up, if you want."

She can calculate till her heart desires. While they're on the ground it doesn't matter what she runs. Again, he's under the impression it will look like gibberish to her.

[brave_heart_verity]

She can only hope so, at this point.

"Thank you." For now, she'll enjoy playing with something new. Math and computers were her only companions most of her life, so this shouldn't take her a terribly long time to figure out. It's certainly not gibberish to her.

"Does passing by gravitational fields affect the engine's fuel efficiency?" Whoa slow down there crazy lady what are you even doing worrying about efficiency before you even have a star chart.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Good at math is something he can appreciate, but not exactly empathize with. Han tends to know enough to get by in the maths and sciences, but he's had no formal education to speak of. He relies hard on his intuition and, for where it's gotten him so far ... most would probably say he's doing pretty good.

Good enough to get through the galaxies on most days, with enough guile and guts to keep himself alive. Really, he should focus more on what he's been able to do and not what he can't do.

"Of course. Resistance will change the amount of fuel we're using." Which, now that she brings it up, could be why he ran out of fuel coming here. If they encountered some dense gravity that he didn't anticipate ... certainly possible considering the Nexus.

[brave_heart_verity]

He's spent his time on better things, like social skills. That gets her envy, not her scorn. There's no question in her mind that he's doing well for himself, but she's noticing he's not as self-assured as he pretends. That's okay. Neither is she.

She gives him a moment to think about that before continuing with her questions. "Does the navcom account for that?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He nods.

"Theoretically, if your maps we're updated well enough and you were flying through friendly skies, you could plot your course and ship could practically fly herself."

But when is Han ever taking a quiet cruise through friendly skies? Even when there's no threat of Empirical interference, half the thugs of the galaxy seem to wanna gun him down for one reason or another.

What do you know, she almost looks like she knows what she's doing on that computer. Huh.

[brave_heart_verity]

"That sounds like less fun," she admits with a slightly mischievous smile. What kind of proper adventure is it if everything is smooth sailing?

Yes, yes she does. She's not one of her world's many supergeniuses, but she can learn. And she is not at all embarrassed that a four-year-old once confused her with technobabble so hush. That kid was Valeria Richards; nobody can keep up with a Richards except another Richards and maybe a Stark or a Doom.

(Now there's someone Han would hate: Doom uses science and magic together, at the same time.)

Anyway, new topic. "Do you have a flight recorder?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"In so much as a log of our take off and landing coordinates."

It's not like a TSA black box or anything. She's not going to find any records of his dialogues in the cockpit with people. If that was a thing, he would have disabled that shit immediately.

"Why?"

[brave_heart_verity]

"Ah."

She gives a little shrug, shutting down the navcom before focusing entirely on him and the new topic. "If something had recorded any turbulence or anomalies you encountered, it might have helped us figure out how you got here and find it again. But retracing your path should do that too."

Yes, it's an 'us'. She's not going to abandon him to dealing with it all by himself.

"And it's good to know what systems are on a ship I might someday be a little bit responsible for."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Han eyes Verity sidelong and for a moment, he wonders who should be teaching whom here? Not that it isn't a pleasant surpise, but, she's a hell of a lot further along that he would have expected considering what she told him of her earth.

Still, the thought of a them is kind of ... pleasing.

"Yeah." He says, picking himself up out of his chair. "Good point."

[brave_heart_verity]

Ver smiles and climbs out of the chair to follow him. Being the passive observer for so long has let her pick up on a lot of things. It's nice to surprise people like that sometimes. And one thing she's been learning is that everywhere has its own good ideas.

"What kind of defenses does the ship have?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"Deflector shields." That's the jargon that they use in his galaxy though and he doesn't know if earth has anything like it, he'll try to explain ...

"It's a kind of energy shield that surrounds the ship. It's meant to create just enough of a barrier around the ship that the enemy fire ricochets away from us, rather than absorb the blast entirely."

That said ...

"The Falcon isn't meant for taking heavy fire, though. Escapability is her best defense."

Out of the corridor to the cockpit, when you head directly to the middle of the ship is a curious looking ladder. That's where they're heading next.

[brave_heart_verity]

It's not a technology she saw in her everyday life, but she can guess the basics from the terms. Hurrah for clear nomenclature. "That makes sense. To deflect instead of taking the full force of the attack. And then get away."

It's not unlike her own self-defense philosophies: run away whenever possible, and try to avoid getting hurt.

The ladder is indeed curious. She didn't think the ship had multiple decks.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

It's possible that he's getting the impression he's over explaining to her. In his defense, though, she hasn't called him out or asked for a lesser amount of detail.

"Quad lazer turrents." He says, gesturing to the ladder. "One above and one below. Relatively effective against small fighter craft and allows us to target quicker than any of the other weapons systems."

[brave_heart_verity]

If she minded, she'd say something. Maybe she just likes to hear him talk, has he considered that?

"Ah. I'm guessing I'm not using those for target practice today. May I go look?"

[twelve_not_fourteen]

He has not thought, even for a brief moment, that the questions were for the sake of continuing to hear him talk. While she might feel that way, it's just not the kind of thing that would occur to him at this point. Also, that can only be part of the reason at best since, she seems to have a pretty genuine curiosity?

Mmm. It's not that he's got a problem with her looking, it's just that there's not room for the both of them at one of the turrents. He can't watch her handling his Falcon as closely from here. On the other hand, if they were for real getting shot at, he'd probably have no choice but to let her use one. She might as well see the thing before then.

"Yeah, go ahead." He says, after talking himself through that. "I can't really fit in there with you, though."

[brave_heart_verity]

See? Not so hard to figure out after all. She likes hearing him talk about his ship, because he's kind of adorably fond of the Falcon. She also likes getting answers even when she's halfway sure she knows what the answer is before she asks. Asking questions also lets him know she's interested and engaged with the topic. Such a complex and terrifying creature, having three motivations like that.

The hesitation doesn't go unnoticed. "I won't touch anything. Will you talk me through the controls while I'm looking at them?" See? Still the captain. If he's watching from below she'll sit on her hands once she gets up there so he can see she's not in any danger of doing something she shouldn't.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Speaking of alterior motives, he almost wishes he wouldn't have made her feel like she had to sit on her hands. Seeing as how it obstructs a certain look he might have been trying to get. He got to watch her walk up the ladder, though. You know, for safety reasons.

"So what you have in front of you are AG-2G quad laser cannons. Its a pair of foot pedals that control the rotation." She probably can't reach the pedals at all since the seats are adjusted for Han and Chewie, but they're there and she should expect to move if she would press down on one.

"Those are twin firing grips in front of you. The triggers are on the back side." He pauses for a moment to think of what else to tell her. "A display screen is on a swing arm to your right side."

That's the basics of what she's looking at up there. After a moment, it occurs to him to add, "having these on my ship is technically an illegal modification and could get me jailed for a long time, if anyone caught me."

Though, hardly the only one of those on the Falcon.

[brave_heart_verity]

Poor Han, how he suffers. Having to be all 'safety'-minded instead of enjoying the view. Life is terribly unfair. But take heart: she'll be coming down again soon.

There's several things she can't reach easily; she wonders if the seat and controls are adjustable, and how hard that would be. Not that she wants to have to use these things, but she might have to be prepared to do it standing up. Won't that be fun.

"What, you mean your part of the galaxy isn't a lawless expanse where anyone with a gun is their own authority?" Her tone strikes a careful balance between sarcasm and teasing. "And here I was going to get myself a cowboy hat."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Quad gunning standing up, huh? Well, life on the Falcon is nothing, if not a unique set of challenges. Though, adjusting isn't so hard, when you know where everything is. It's just hard to figure out the first time, because you're usually running up there as something is shooting at you.

He gets that she's making a little bit of a sassy joke, but he's got no idea what a cowboy hat is any more than she knows what a Corellian blood stripe is. Still, he does have a response to the lawless part ...

"No, it's not just a galaxy wide den of thieves." His job is somewhat defined by the need to transport things that would otherwise be banned by such laws.

[brave_heart_verity]

Yeah, it's easy when you know where things are. Ver's never seen the movies this sort of thing before in person.

She climbs back down before replying again. Enjoy the show. "That's good. I'd hate to think a morally upright citizen like myself would be entirely foreign there."

Again with the tone. No, she's not necessarily a good girl in everyone's eyes. For instance: she could explain the cowboy thing, but she's not going to unless he asks.

"I'm going to start to think you're trouble if you're not careful, you know."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"What did I do this time?"

Because, you know, he has to presume he's done other things already, for starters. And, he's also convinced that his looks have been subtle.

[brave_heart_verity]

Her answer is more in a look than in a word: she looks back up at the illegal laser guns before saying anything. "Whatever made you need those." In other words, she was teasing again.

She knows he's trouble.

It's why she likes him so much.

[twelve_not_fourteen]

"Ah." He says with a slow nod. "Well, for what it's worth, they were there when I acquired the ship. I do make good use of them, though, at times."

That said, she's absolutely right about him being trouble, hence him skipping right past the false pretense and getting to the part he messed up at. He's also thankful he doesn't have to be put in a position of lying/not lying about a possible wandering eye. Yet.

[brave_heart_verity]

"Oh, well, that's entirely different." No, it's not. "You wouldn't want them to go to waste or get rusty."

Wandering eyes don't always bother her. She knows people are going to look. She looks, a little, sometimes. It's all in the how and the when. So long as he's looking at her when they're talking, she suspects they'll survive.

"Because rust in space is a serious issue, I'm sure. And, like, space barnacles or something."

[twelve_not_fourteen]

Again, in not wanting to get into talking about the Empire (they're having a relatively nice time and it will certainly sour his mood to talk politics), he avoids this tidbit, but they we're always illegal to have on your ship, either.

Still, he gets that she's teasing.

"Things that cling to the ship? We get Mynock's. They've got leathery wings and chew on the power cables of star ships."

Han begins walking them toward the life support system, which will no doubt be a trip to show her. Bacta tanks. There's nothing like that on earth.