Dead Star Dockyards

A collection of circles and lines filled Titanyana's eyes, sliding about in front of her as she struggled to keep track of everything. Tilting and twisting the sticks in front of her in a vain attempt to regain control, she could feel her heartrate rise against her will. She was spinning, fast, and it was beginning to disorientate her.

woop-woop

That alarm, what did it mean again? Was it the excessive rotation warning? Maybe the incoming object alarm? Whatever it was, Titanyana could only tell it was more bad news, something that would further overwhelm her.

The intensity of the spinning once more increased, Titanyana finding herself completely incapable of righting the simulation. A few moments later she began to heave. All at once, the display of colored lines and shapes on the screen returning to the same black they had been dancing across moments prior, leaving Titanyana a dizzy mess. 

"Vertigo is a bitch."

Titanyana hadn't heard Donovan come in. It would have been hard for her to do over the sound of all the alarms, but his presence was still a surprise. 

"My head hurts."

"Close your eyes and lean back." Titanyana did as instructed. "Now take a deep breath, then relax your muscles as you exhale."

Titanyana followed the recommendation, sinking deeper into the chair. For the first few moments the spinning consumed her, temples pulsing as the headache grew, but gradually subsided. Her eyes, which had been moving side to side in tandem with the dizzy impetus, began to shake intangible yoke while her stomach settled. There was still a smidgeon of nausea, but it was much more manageable.

"Feeling better?"

"Mhm." Titanyana opened her eyes and tilted her head back. "A-"

She had not made eye contact with Donovan, but Mercedes, who immediately began to lick her face.

"Mercedes, stop it." Donovan yanked Mercedes back while Titanyana jolted forward to get away from the canine. "How did she do, Arc?"

"Remarkably well for the limited amount of time she has been training, but not nearly close enough to the benchmark for operation."

"I was looking for a score. I know she won't be able to pilot this early."

"She passed the systems examination with the minimum required marks for basic operation after an hour of instruction, something which will need further reinforcement at a later date, and performed decently well on the landing and takeoff simulations for her first attempts, though she did not quite reach the standard for certification."

"Better than I had been expecting - Mercedes, no - but not out of the ordinary. I take it this was the first order orientation and velocity control simulation?"

"Indeed. She maintained a course and angle of approach within the defined bounds of 'steady' for five minutes and twenty seconds, gradually losing control beyond that point. The total simulation duration was thirty minutes and six seconds."

"You didn't stop it sooner?" 

"I felt it important to provide her the opportunity to correct her faults and solve problems herself the first time around." Titanyana recalled wanting to continue herself. "It stimulates critical thinking capabilities, even if she does not stumble upon a solution."

"Maybe so, but an orientation and velocity control examination isn't suited to that sort of instruction. Mistakes and lost progress build up over time if they are not remedied immediately, and after a certain point a person will struggle to figure out what is going on if they don't know the proper strategy." Donovan grabbed Titanyana's hand, helping her out of the recessed cockpit. "Titanyana isn't used to analyzing data like you and I are, buddy. A slight shift in the values of numbers and movement of elements on screen isn't going to mean as much to her, if she even understands what they mean in the first place."

"I understand as much, however I still felt it important to provide her some freedom to explore the controls without my interference."

"That's fine, but she can do that after she understands the basics." After ensuring Titanyana had safely been extricated from the pit and could stand up without support, Donovan hopped down into it. "Boot up the third order orientation and velocity sim."

"Isn't Diana expecting you to return soon?"

"She can wait. This is much more important."

"How so? It isn't like a third order simulation counts as meaningful practice for you."

"It's not for me." Donovan adjusted the seat to his liking. Titanyana was much smaller than either Terran, meaning this was probably an element of the Pegasus' design made with her in mind. "I want to act like an instructor for a bit."

"Very well." 

The same set of circles and lines appeared on the screen, though there were a few differences. This time, the  circles were noticeably smaller. Titanyana wasn't quite sure what they meant at this point, almost half an hour of stressful maneuvering had removed that information from her brain, but she vaguely remembered having to keep the little dot at the center of the screen inside of those circles. She was also pretty sure that they moved past when you moved through them, but she had never managed to do so. 

"Starting now." Arc hadn't provided a countdown, something of a surprise to the Nekh, but it wasn't the most surprising thing. That honor belonged to Donovan, who seemed perfectly content to sit there and do nothing. 

"Aren't you going to . . ?" Titanyana wasn't sure what the proper word for whatever this task was. Sure, piloting probably covered it to some extent, but this was a bit more specific.

"Third order simulations don't even count as warm ups in my eyes. It needs some time to produce enough errors to fix while explaining what I'm doing." Donovan crossed his arms and closed his eyes, much to the dismay of Titanyana. Already the circles and lines swam across the screen faster than she could keep track of. "Actually, this might be a good time to go over the necessary controls. What is this?"

Donovan was pointing to the joystick on the right side of the cockpit. 

"I, um, I can't remember the name, but it controls . . . rolling? Rotation?"

"Is that all?"

"The little . . . pad thingy . . . on the top can make it move to the sides and up and down."

"Anything else?"

". . . um . . ." Titanyana couldn't remember what anything else did. There were too many little switches and nubs on the top and side for her to keep track.

"It's fine to say you don't know. I won't expect you to know everything by heart until your first hundred hours or so are up."

"I don't know."

"This is the Control Stick. It handles rotation, while the Trim Pad on top handles minor axis translation, both of which you identified, but also has controls regarding the weapons, which you haven't learned to use yet. Important to what we are going to talk about though are these little buttons here, the locking buttons. These prevent you from making inputs for certain motions."

"Control stick. Control stick. Control stick." Titanyana stared at it and repeated it's name, trying her hardest to memorize it. "Trim pad. Trim pad. Trim pad."

"What do you think this locking button does?" Donovan pointed to a button near the top of the inside half of the stick. It was pretty small, Titanyana hadn't even noticed it was there.

"It locks a control?"

"Which one?"

"Dunno."

"This would be the Yaw Lock. This prevents you from turning the craft left and right-" Donovan demonstrated. After pressing the button the stick would not turn side to side. "-until you twist beyond a set resistance limit and trigger the safety, at which point the button unlocks and allows yawing again. This sideways rotation was generally considered to be annoying given how easy it was to do accidentally under stress back home, a sentiment I am inclined to agree with, and is incredibly important to a strategy I am going to show you later."

"Okay, so it stops me from twisting the Control Stick on accident?"

"Exactly! What does this button do?" Donovan pointed to a button below the trim pad. Titanyana could barely make out an 'H' on it, which could mean a whole host of things. 

"I don't know."

"This is the Horizontal Trim Lock. Much like the yaw lock, it prevents you from moving the trim pad, but only in the horizontal directions. This stops you from sliding left and right when you don't want to be, just like how the yaw lock prevents turning without when undesirable. It also has a point at which the safety will disengage." Donovan pushed the trim pad to the side without actually moving it, until a click allowed him to push it all the way, the button returning to its previous position.

"That's . . . useful?" Titanyana felt a voluntary restriction on movement like this was pointless.

"I'll show you in a second. What do you think this button is for?" Donovan pointed to a similar button adjacent to the horizontal trim lock. This one had a 'V' on it as opposed to an 'H'.

"Is it . . ." Titanyana decided to think about this one. It didn't feel right having this information told to her without at least some form of thinking on her end. Arc seemed to have hit the nail on the head with that point. "Is it a Vertical lock by any chance?"

The context clues were there. Donovan had been talking about the different ways these buttons stopped certain motions, and the horizontal lock had the same letter as word it corresponded to on it. It would make sense that, after a yaw and horizontal lock, there would probably be something for vertical movement, right?

"Perfect. This is indeed the Vertical Trim Lock. It is the same as the horizontal lock except it controls vertical trim. Well done!"

Titanyana smiled at the praise. It felt good.

"Now, there are a bunch of other buttons here I'd love to go over with you, but I probably should keep this short. Diana is waiting for us." Donovan settled into his seat, focusing on the screed before him. "The first thing I would like to draw your attention to is the hologram of the Pegasus below the screen. Can you see it from where you are?"

"Yes." Titanyana had to bend down, but it was there.

"Do you see the arrow that curves around the outside?"

". . . I think so?" Donovan moved one of his hands to point at it, tracing it with a finger. "Yes, I see it!"

Titanyana had noticed it before, but at the time it was but a single drop in a storm. She didn't remember what it meant. 

"This is the rotational indicator. It will tell you which direction the ship is spinning, as well as give you a rough idea of how fast it is spinning. In this case, the magnitude is large enough that it is irrelevant, and so you need to look at the numbers here." Donovan pointed to a series of rapidly shifting numbers at the bottom left of the display. "This one tells you how many times you are rotating per second, while these six numbers describe the deviation of the Pegasus's controllable axes of rotation to the current axes and planes of rotation."

"What does that mean?"

"For you, only the rotations per second matter. Those other numbers are, in essence, best summarized by the rotational indicator you see around the hologram, however I want you to know what they are so you don't get confused later. I suppose I should technically say that they are helpful for determining if you are spinning really slowly, which could have an affect on your velocity vector if you plan to accelerate for an extended period of time, but Arc will handle that."

"Okay. Why is the hologram important?"

"Do you remember the locks?"

"Yes."

"Wonderful, because the first step in figuring out how to handle this simulation is to engage all of them." Donovan pushed all three buttons down. "Do you have an idea why?"

". . . no? It seems silly to limit your options."

"Does it now?" Donovan spared her a glance upwards. "I won't tell you that is wrong, however I will couch that by saying it isn't right either. Instead of limiting your options, think of this as limiting your capacity to make mistakes."

"Huh?"  

"Look, humans, Terrans at least, are creatures that fundamentally exist in three axes. This applies to the three dimensional space we inhabit, as well as the way we move. There are three primary axes of translation, and three primary axes of rotation, six total components of movement and orientation to keep track of, right?"

"That's . . . yes?"

"Except it isn't. Given that we, for the most part, live in environments where gravity is a factor, our capacity for movement in the vertical direction is limited barring some form of object to climb. Would you agree?"

". . . I suppose."

"That basically removes one axis of translation from our toolbox. Additionally, we aren't very efficient at moving side to side in comparison to forwards and backwards, correct? Think about how much more effort it takes to move sideways than straight forward."

"That's true."

"That removes a second axis of translation, leaving us with one. However, we can still move around and keep an eye on our surroundings quite easily without those two. The structure of our spines grants us a decent ability to look up and down, covering one of the three rotational axes, while our bodies being stacked vertically allows us to turn side to side rapidly as well, covering another axis. In fact, we really only have a problem turning ourselves sideways like a cartwheel. Our ribcages and hips don't like it. That removes one rotational axis from our toolbox."

"So what?"

"How many translational and rotational axes do we work with on a regular and instinctual basis?"

"One translation, and two rotational?" Titanyana didn't quite understand.

"Correct. That doesn't mean we don't understand and incorporate the other axes at certain points, but the majority of our motion is along those three axes. We instinctually understand movement along this one-two combination more than any other." Donovan took his hand off the control stick as if to reveal something important. "So tell me, Titanyana, how many axes of each type can I move along with this configuration?"

Titanyana looked at the stick. With all of those locks in place . . . "One translational, and two rotational."

"Correct. The rotational axes might not be the exact same ones we use, however our brains are set up in such a way that we can adjust to it easily." Donovan made his first move. "First, you should rotate the ship to have the rotational arrow pointing downwards from behind the ship. This can be done by manipulating roll and pitch."

Donovan snapped the line to the position he had described with shocking speed. 

"It's fine if this process takes a bit your first few times. You are basically learning to walk all over again, but you need to know how to walk before you can climb trees or do cartwheels." Donovan rolled the simulation around as if to prove a point. "The next step is to get your rotations per second close to zero. At this point, it is just a matter of pulling back on the control stick and maintaining the proper angle in order to right yourself."

It took a few seconds thanks to the obscene rotational momentum that had been built up over the time spent doing nothing. 

"Once you've handled your rotation, you can try to adjust your velocity by shifting your angle of approach relative to the desired course and speed." Donovan angled the Pegasus so that the desired velocity vector fell roughly halfway between the actual vector and the 'front' of the Pegasus before pushing the throttle forward all the way. "After, and I need to stress that this is after, you get the direction of the vector roughly aligned with the objective vector you can work on the magnitude. You should be passing through one of these circles every ten seconds."

"But what about the simulation? Doesn't it move you around?"

"It does, but the random impetus is gradual, not instantaneous, for the first three orders of difficulty in these simulations. Because of that, you have time to react to the shifts in motion without needing to use your other axes. Additionally, you aren't worried about a position in real space just yet. Only the fourth and fifth order simulations account for that. The lower order sims are to teach pilots how to handle themselves."

Donovan then fell silent, letting Titanyana absorb his actions on her own for a bit.