[Yavin IV -- Pilot Training]

Jin-ho looked around at space, feeling a bit odd after having lost the familiar pull of Yavin's natural gravitational field. Even though it was her first time piloting Headhunter, the nav computer already had a preprogrammed course for her to follow to the station where pilots would recieve more training. Even though the autopilot would be more than capable of getting her there, Jin-ho preferred to fly manually, familiarising herself with the craft a bit more until the time would come to actually start the training.

True enough, her course took her to an old space station set up as a merchant outpost, and various -- mostly contracted -- ships were keeping the peace as well as fending off the occasional pirate threat. The navcomputer automatically sent an ID code over to the outpost, and the Headhunter cut its engines awaiting the tower's reply. With the communications channel open, Jin-ho leaned back a bit and awaited a reply telling her what to do next.

"Alright Jin-Ho, be careful out there, we don;t want you running into any trouble........ Try a few practice rounds...... We are sending you the co-ordinates of an Asteroid field.... Use it as training for flying and firing. But be careful, try not to fly too deep into the field, would be suicidal! Just do the best you can, and keep in contact, we're here for you" The voice said as it cut off. The co-ordinates then filtered through for Jin-Ho.

Jin-ho confirmed the destination, and flew towards the asteroid field indicated on the map. Despite having flown in spaceships before -- Hell, she even grew up on one -- it still felt somewhat odd to have this level of visibility of her surroundings. It made her... more aware of space not having an 'up' and 'down' unlike the larger craft that had been outfitted with gravitational generators. Here, zero G really was... well, zero G.

She gulped slightly as she saw the asteroid field come into view. Large chunks of rock drifted about, occasionally colliding into each other before breaking in two, the pieces following a slightly different path then. She could understand why they didn't let her do this without having her current level of piloting skill tested beforehand.

Realising that ending up getting caught between two asteroids would literally grind the fighter to pieces, she reduced engine thrust to about 20%, and kept her finger on the afterburner in case she needed a quick speed boost to get out of trouble. She manoeuvred around a couple of the larger, slower moving asteroids to get used to the movements, scanning her surroundings intently even while the collision alert wasn't going off.

Slowly but steadily, she started to increaase the engine speed a little at the time. The -- in comparison -- large threat of crashing into something made her place some extra effort in suppressing her normally abundant enthousiasm. Just taking it easy for now.

After about an hour, she was at full engine speed, navigating through the field as if she'd never done differently, and she started to feel confident enough to spare some of her concentration on picking out some targets. She shot a few quick bursts, and watched in satisfaction as the small rocks she had targeted shattered under the sudden buildup of heat the lasers had fed into it.

Getting an idea, she flew out of the field again for a small test. Targeting a larger asteroid that had drifted out of the pack, she flew alongside it, then disabled her engines during a small turn, allowing her to line up with the Headhunter's lasers as the inertia drifted her alongside the stray rock.

Of course, the manoeuver was still far from perfect, and Jin-ho found herself having trouble with correcting the turn, often making mistakes on compensation as well as the recoil in trying to stabilise her lineup for a constant barrage on the rock.

Still, the impacts had made the asteroid drift back into the field again, and the red headed girl didn't yet trust her piloting skill enough to continue training her dogfighting skills in the middle of the asteroid field. Considering she was starting to run low on fuel as well, she decided it would have to wait until another time...

Noticing the time on the onboard clock, she made her way back to the station again, contacting the tower that she was ready to return to Yavin IV again, calling it a day unless there would be another task waiting for her.

When permission was indeed given to head for the base -- after properly scanning for Imperial craft following her -- Jin-ho thanked them before ending the transmission, and heading out to the Massassi temple area the base was located in.

It was a good thing the location was programmed in to the navcomputer, because it would have been nearly impossible to find by the naked eye. Nevertheless, she managed to touch down safely, and after turning her engines off entirely raised the cockpit's canopy to step out on the Landing Pad again.

[Yavin IV -- Pilot Training]