Tag Archives: Chelly Frosher

Saltation – Chapter 6

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Lunch Break
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which everyone is talking about Theo Waitley.

Theo is the celebrity of the moment; there were news crews watching the air chase, and they caught her tricky landing too. She’s uncomfortable with all the attention, which, as Asu says, is better than if she were to start expecting it as her due.

We learn a thing or two more about Hap Harney, including that it was something of an understatement to say that Chelly knew him, and also that he’s been described as “public menace number one”. We still haven’t heard, though, what it was he actually did.

It’s maybe worth noting that this chapter has both a mention of Chelly having an ex-boyfriend and the fact that of the questions being fired at Theo by her temporary crowd of admirers, the sexually suggestive one comes from another girl. We’ve had enough such things happen in past books to get the idea that they’re not uncommon in the Liaden universe, but this is the first time we’ve seen them happen around Theo, so her reaction tells us something about her and perhaps by extension about Delgado. In the event, she doesn’t seem to find anything unusual about either thing, which I wouldn’t necessarily have expected given the way all the talk around First Pair in Fledgling seemed to take a heterosexual context for granted.

Saltation – Chapter 5

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Combined Math Lab
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo goes over her math drill and her memories.

It turns out the Chelly wasn’t just worried about Theo: he knew the pilot who Theo watched being shot down.

The fleeing pilot was named Hap Harney, a former student of the Academy, and the pursuers were officials of some stripe. And Theo might have been suspected of being an accomplice to his flight if her instructor hadn’t had the foresight to have her not only get out of the air but power down and get out of the glider. (Well, she’s suspected anyway, because this seems like one of those everyone-is-a-suspect situations, but she’d have found the suspicion harder to shake.)

We still don’t know what Pilot Harney was up to that got him shot down and shot up by four pursuing jet fighters, except that it apparently had something to do with Politics.

I don’t have an opinion yet about whether the behavior of Asu’s Checksec was deliberate or just thoughtlessness. I’m inclined to believe thoughtlessness on Asu’s part, but we don’t know what priorities the Diamon security head who gave it to her might have had.

It’s not much of a surprise to learn about Theo’s relationship with Bek, considering the direction their interactions were headed the last time we saw them together. The only other person we saw her interacting with in Fledgling that might have been a likely candidate for First Pair was Kartor, and although he seemed to attach some particular value to her, judging by his tendency to leap to her defence, she didn’t appear to think of him that way (nor to be particularly impressed by having her defence leapt to). In any case, he might well have got his job on the Station and moved (as it were) out of Theo’s orbit by the time she got back from Melchiza.

Saltation – Chapter 4

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Academy Flight GT S14
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo’s day is not great.

A mysterious aircraft pursued and shot down by four others. The urgency with which the Academy called on its own aircraft to get out of the sky suggests that they had some idea what was going on, and some reason to suppose that the four pursuing craft might not limit their attentions to the particular craft they were pursuing.

Theo manages a difficult landing in a sequence I feel probably deserves to be talked about, not just acknowledged, but I don’t have the whatever to appreciate it in detail.

Asu takes a while to notice what’s going on outside her own concerns, but at least when she does notice she seems suitably concerned and has some idea how to respond appropriately. (And the fact that she knows Theo’s tea preferences without needing to ask suggests that she does sometimes pay more attention to other people.) This is not to say that Chelly doesn’t want to help, but he seems like he might be under the kind of stress that hinders, rather than helps, efforts to think about what to do; I can relate.

Saltation – Chapter 3

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Erkes Dormitory
Suite 302
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo gets to know her roommates better.

Asu is the scion of a family that owns a fleet of trading ships — famously and prosperously, to judge by her sense of entitlement, her expectation that Theo would recognise her name (and the fact that Chelly does), and her discourse last chapter on the risks of people always trying to find out what one’s family is doing. (I infer that her homeworld’s media have an attitude towards the lives of the famous more like, say, Feinick than like, say, Liad, though without Feinick’s transactional approach.)

Chelly, despite his poor showing earlier, remains impressively reasonable in the face of a mix of deliberate and inadvertant provocation from Asu and Theo. I wonder if his not-exactly-apologetic comment about Wilsmyth being not at his best when he’s not working is also a description of himself.

Saltation – Chapter 2

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New Student Orientation
Ozler Auditorium
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo meets her roommates.

Although Theo noticed last chapter that things here are more freewheeling and less closely monitored than was the case on either of the planets she’s previously left footprints on, the wider ramifications haven’t all sunk in. She remarks to herself that the way Asu acts you’d think her home planet didn’t have a Safety Office — but she clearly means it as a joke, and it doesn’t seem to have occurred to her that it’s very likely true.

Asu says her age is “Eighteen Standards, and a half”, and Theo repeats the “and a half” before conceding that Asu is older than her. I’m not sure whether that means that it’s the half year that makes the difference in their ages or just Theo quietly pinging the unusual degree of precision. It would make sense in general that two people starting school together would be within a year of each other in age, but I’m not sure if that applies to a piloting academy; presumably pilots arrive at whatever age they’re ready. Still, I’d like to think it’s that, if only because that would mean we have an idea of Theo’s age in Standard Years and not just in the still-undefined Delgadan years.

I don’t think I like the detail from the orientation speech about the planetary government requiring them to graduate a minimum number of pilots per year. There are so many ways a requirement like that could go wrong.

After spending so much time on Delgado, I find myself wondering whether Ozler and Erkes were men or women. Which is the unmarked case on Eylot?

Saltation – Chapter 1

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Shuttle Approach
Anlingdin Piloting Academy
Eylot

In which Theo arrives at Anglingdin Piloting Academy.

Theo is off to piloting school (and, since it’s apparently still within a year of her time on Melchiza, it looks like she achieved the six month prep time Jen Sar said would be the minimum if she was a good student).

She turns out to be wrong about not seeing the three student pilots again soon, although perhaps the encounter by the luggage will be their last; it’s been a while since I first read Fledgling and I don’t remember. Somehow, though, I doubt it. I do recognise two others who appear or are mentioned in this chapter as people Theo will be encountering again with some regularity.