Jaren Jast rolled his shoulder, still sore from some unfortunate slip during his morning workout, as he stepped onto the bridge. The human woman at the console turned, swiveling in her seat, to face him. She was all blonde hair, green eyes, and sharp features; she looked more the part of an actress in a holovid than the true-to-form ace fighter pilot she was.
“Six minutes from egress, Captain,” she said, addressing him with the curt formality appropriate for a superior officer. Telsa Jetstar had flown interceptors for the Republic Navy during the final years of the war, racking up seven confirmed kills and claiming another unconfirmed six. She’d turned to flying freighters and cheap starhoppers as a commercial pilot after the Treaty of Coruscant. Jast figured she must have been bored, so, he made her an offer. It just so turned out she was very bored, and very eager to fly something fast and dangerous.
Jast was the captain of the
Raven Trespass, but Telsa was her master; Jast could fly a ship, but Telsa was a pilot. She handled the
Raven like a professional dancer handles a partner—boldly, confidently, and with a mind to impress her audience. Jast, seated in the co-pilot’s seat, had all too often felt his blood run cold in anticipation of some death defying, high-g maneuver that, this time, would surely kill him and his entire crew. And yet they always made it through, and without Telsa batting an eye all the while.
Jast sank into the captain’s chair—which on the Raven was situated on the right side of the cockpit—and considered the swirling blue-and-white field of hyperspace spread out before them through the transparisteel viewport. “You think you actually go blind if you look into it long enough?”
“Spacer’s tales,” Telsa answered, relaxing a bit, “I don’t believe it.”
“Probably more likely to go blind on Nar Shaddaa’s surface with all the shit in the air,” Jast suggested. “Walking around in that, you know? That can’t be good for your eyes.”
“I wouldn’t think so,” the pilot answered again, turning to the console to perform some last-minute checks before the
Raven left hyperspace. “Engineering?”
“All good,” Val answered, the Twi’lek’s melodic voice floating through the ship’s intercom.
“Thank you,” Telsa intoned, skimming a few more readouts before inputting a final all-clear command. “All clear, Captain.”
“Nice work, XO,” he said.
Soon, the blue-and-white blur dissolved and dissipated, slowly, and then all at once, and suddenly the Raven Trespass was drifting in real space. Before them, at a range of some five thousand kilometers, was the massive world of Nal Hutta, and Nar Shaddaa, the moon-turned-urban-sprawl, orbiting above.
“Home sweet home,” Jast said. Telsa went to work setting a course for Nar Shaddaa, initiating a slow burn across the black that would take them to the Hutt city-moon. “Telsa, can you spin up a tightbeam transmission to our friend?" he asked, referring, of course, to their contact on Nar Shaddaa, Khulbe the Hutt himself. "Let’s get the ball rolling on this. I don’t want to be here any longer than we need to be.”
“On it, Captain,” Telsa answered, pulling up the communications suite and punching in the appropriate codes.
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