Tag Archives: piloting sims

Saltation – Chapter 33

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Primadonna
Alanzia Port

In which an expected package comes in an unexpected shape.

It’s been two years since Theo left Eylot to start working with Rig Tranza, and in that time she’s visited nineteen planets, which might mean that they’re averaging one-and-a-quarter months between planets, or more likely that they’ve got a regular patch of space and have visited some of those planets more than once. Or else the wording “set foot on” is significant, and they’ve visited additional planets that Theo’s foot didn’t get to meet.

Two years is significant, too, because Eylot said that after two years they might possibly consider letting her back into Anlingdin Academy if she grovelled enough. She doesn’t seem to be in any particular hurry to go and find out if that was true.

Saltation – Chapter 25

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Codrescu Station
Eylot Nearspace

In which Theo sees a ghost.

There are limits to how far a person can proceed even when intending to read a series in its internal chronological order, if only because there’s going to be chapters like this one which is in itself not in chronological order. It starts with Theo and yos’Senchul in orbit, and then there’s a flashback as Theo reflects on the events that occurred between the end of last chapter and the beginning of this. So should a person committed to internal chronological order consider rearranging the scenes of the chapter? I would say no. It’s all very well to want to read the stories in chronological order, but it’s important not to lose sight of the fact that it’s about reading the stories. The authors’ choice to tell the events in this order means something; the order is part of the story.

That the “ghost ship” which appears on Theo’s ship scan is not just a scanner glitch of no future significance will be no surprise to anyone who knows the title of this novel’s sequel. (I can’t remember now whether I knew that thing when I first read this novel, but anyway I knew it wasn’t just a scanner glitch of no future significance.)

Saltation – Chapter 20

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Piloting Praxis
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo is not going home for the holidays.

There is a saying: If you can’t be a good example, perhaps you can be a horrible warning. The price of fame is that Theo’s teachers seem inclined to use her as one or the other.

Being of a mind to look for connections with other stories, I idly wonder if any of the master-adjudicated piloting errors the students are set to study is the one that was at the centre of “Changeling”. The odds are not necessarily good, though, even if the timing does work out right (which at this point I’m not sure it does); in the wide universe, there are surely more than enough piloting errors to choose from.

Saltation – Chapter 13

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Ozar Rokan Memorial Flight Center
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo loses her temper.

The thing that strikes me about this conversation on Wilsmyth’s side is that he clearly hasn’t bothered to learn much about Theo before trying to reel her in. I suspect he has some kind of mental picture of What Junior Students Are Like and has planned his strategy based on how his hypothetical Junior Student would react, instead of taking the time to work out how this particular junior student interacts with the world — with unfortunate results when it turns out that Theo differs from his ideal student in… pretty much every significant respect.

It doesn’t entirely surprise me, since he’s basically trying to pick up Theo as a tool to his own advancement, that he’s not thinking of her as a person with her own viewpoint, but it does kind of surprise me that he doesn’t at least realise what’s likely to happen when he threatens her: he was right there when her reputation for reacting aggressively started. (On the other hand, he was right there and didn’t back down until somebody else pointed out the danger he might be in, so maybe he’s just not very good at spotting what’s going on outside his own head.)

The thing that strikes me about this conversation on Theo’s side is that the subtext of the conversation goes straight over her head without her even feeling a breeze. You can tell she hasn’t been raised Liaden: I don’t know if a Liaden her age would have been able to negotiate a graceful exit from the conversation with Wilsmyth so determined to get what he wants, but she would at least have noticed that he was trying politics on her.

Saltation – Chapter 12

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Number Twelve Leafydale Place
Greensward-by-Efraim
Delgado

In which Theo’s parents find out what she’s been up to.

Cho sig’Radia’s cover letter doesn’t give any warning about what happened on Theo’s famous flight. The pilot who raised Theo might perhaps be trusted to realise that a flight which has drawn special attention and been deemed a valuable teaching aid probably involves a more-than-usual amount of adversity, but Kamele, who was raised on a Safe World and has little experience of pilots, could have used a warning.

Speaking of the pilot who raised Theo, I notice the narrator is again doing that thing of not referring to him by any particular name.

Saltation – Chapter 11

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Counseling Center
Anlingdin Piloting Academy

In which Theo is given some paperwork to review.

Theo goes to see the counselor Chelly recommended, meets Kara again, and receives a letter from Captain Cho informing her, among other things, that news of her dramatic landing has been directed to her mother, on the Safe World of Delgado. Kind of a transitional chapter, this, full of consequences unfolding but not yet unfolded far enough to be clear on how they’ll turn out.

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 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?