Open Terrain

*Dante received the telemetry, and linked it to his topographical read outs - making sure to mentally mark the locations of the evac sites. Beyond that though, he silently waited for Alkor to elaborate on his plan. . .for a long while he didn't say anything, and just as Dante reached to double check his comm, Alkor began talking - describing in detail his premonitions of the ill fated station. Inwardly, Dante didn't know what to think of it...as a Matukai, he had never experienced visions or precognition...though, he knew how potent and useful they could be. Shrugging, Dante clicked the comm.*

:: Sounds like precognition. We would be wise to heed the advice of the force... ::

*It was a noticeably toned down answer than what might have been expected; though not unusual for Dante. For Dante, the force was part science, and part God...it held a deep level of spirtualism in Dante's life, especially as it proved to be the central role of many of the Matukai's rites and rituals for harmonizing the body. Because of this, Dante's often rude and arrogant attitude was disregarded, in exchange for a solemn and nigh reverent tone. How would you react, after all, if your deity gave you a vision of the future?*

*As Alkor's ship rocketed upward into the sky, Dante himself pulled his fighter into a steep climb - keeping on Alkor's starboard wing.*

:: Copy Alky1, I'm on your four, holding at 1,000 KPH. ::

Advice of the force indeed. Alkor's indignation would have been evident if Dante were looking for it, but it was otherwise kept silent to the radio. The Corellian was loathe to think of the energy field that permeated everything and devoured most of his life, destroying everything he came to love or care about was in any way a benign entity. He poured on the throttle and his ascent arched, climbing toward the stratosphere and diverting energy to his forward heat shields, to prevent being torn apart by the atmosphere.

Visions like the one he had gotten outside Yavin station were best left unspoken, because they shook the foundation of men who revered the "great giver of visions," and Alkor could appreciate the need for some kind of optimism that some men held in their hearts. Who was he to tell Dante his god was a rodder choobies?

The force was a tool, and at the moment, one Alkor saw no use for; but it could not be denied that his visions or feelings were hardly wrong. The feeling Alkor had gotten, while not entirely unlike what had been described to Dante, felt a world worse to Alkor than he had let on. It was as if he were being torn to pieces on the molecular level, like some agonizing wail were coming from in his chest unbidden, and he understood, without words, that he was being drawn there.

He had always been specific about drinking away from these kinds of things, but when they stumbled upon him, they had a way of making him pay attention. And since it only happened in times of compelling need, Alkor knew better than to brush the "premonitions" aside.

The ability he had always had, Alkor never fully understood. He had never been vocal about it, either. He suspected that he understood the way things held together because he was himself broken, but there was so much about it that he could not fathom. The way the world twisted around him, the places where it felt at its most frail, the creatures that stood upon the precipice of uncertainty...

Alkor blinked away the thoughts that welled up in his mind and focused on the present; there was more use for him here, anyway. ::Breaking atmo in five...::

As my starfighter took more of a horizontal approach from liftoff... I went for a little while till i was at least 3000 miles away from the academy. then signaling to my astromech that here was far enough... the ship took a sharp climb toward the stars.