Feather the throttle, waiting for the marker, pitch the nose down just a little bit, pulse the RCS aaaaaaand full burn out of periapsis. Jinda Serhing spends less time in the simulators than the team chief would like. Whenever Admentos complains about it, Jinda just shrugs, smiles, and says “Practice takes the fun out of it.” It, in this case, being Interstellar Rallying, a race to see who can grab waypoints from the listed star systems in the quickest time. Plotting and flying the fastest route requires pinpoint The best atmospheric pilot in the formula, she’s up against her rival, her team mate, and the cold blackness of space.FTL calculations and daring low altitude flybys. Jinda’s particular talent is atmospheric flight. Though it isn’t needed in every star system, her knack for getting down onto and up off planets with atmospheres has seen Jinda make the podium in seven of the last eleven races. Her successes have put Dynamo Racing into 2nd place in the constructors championship and with only four races left in the season, they stand a good chance of beating Everest Team to the prize.
Those prizes are shiny and all, but for Jinda it’s flight itself that gives her life. Flying amongst the stars and watching them streak past in FTL are her first memories. She grew up on spaceships, going wherever her mother’s next job would take her. Sometimes it was cargo tankers, sometimes huge passenger ships but her favourite times were when it was just her and her mother, Lolie, and the Bold Weasel on a small delivery run or prospecting a new moon. Despite her begging, Lolie wouldn’t let Jinfa fly the Bold Weasel as a little informal lessons in deep space aren’t the same as the professional licence needed to fly legally. Once Jinda turned 18, she discovered the cheapest way to get that licence was with the Star Core.
She middled her way through the academy with passing grades. Unfortunately, her record breaking performances at the helm and in the cockpit were enough to secure her her chosen posting with the explorer regiments. Instead, she ended up on border patrol duty, flying medium fighters out from the same space stations along the same route a few times a month. Jinda chafed against the boredom and the routine and she increasingly found the discipline of the military constraining. By her third failure to transfer to the explorer regiments, she’d had enough and did not renew her service contract.
From the Star Core she drifted into running light haul courier jobs. Her speed and daring got her noticed by Varnagraneous when she beat the odds to make sure a critical engine part made it to the start line of the Perseus Delta leg of that year’s Interstellar Rally. Through an absurd coincidence, Varnagraneous was looking for a new pilot to fill the second slot in their team as their racing partner of old was retiring at the end of the season. Varnagraneous’ reputation was enough to get a test flight and from there Jinda talent earnt her seat. For three seasons Jinda benefited from Varnagraneous’ mentoring as she developed into one of the star pilots on the IS rally circuit.
Over these years Jinda developed a friendly rivalry with Xonde from Xonde Speed. Another younger pilot, Xonde is a product of Xonde Speed academy but hasn’t let that turn him into a racing robot. Jinda and Xonde have similar instinctive styles but Xonde is the far better navigator and their cunning short cuts have seen Jinda having to buy the drinks many a time. Jinda’s relationship with her new team mate is less fun. Varnagraneous finally retired last season so the team brought in Wo Hon Wo on a very expensive contract. They’re cold, unfriendly, and fussy about the smallest detail. To them Jinda is an undisciplined upstart but Jinda isn’t getting involved in the team politics. As long as Wo Hon Wo keeps themselves to their side of the garage and doesn’t mistreat the mechanics, they can race however they want.
As this season comes to a close, the pilot standings have Wo Hon Wo leading only two points ahead of Peire Waterfell from Cracking Fun. Xonde is third with Jinda a distant fourth. The journalists talk about how she could close the gap with good finishes in the final few races, but Jinda has her mind on the off-season already. Lolie and she have been refitting the Bold Weasel and they’re planning a mother and daughter tour of the Sharp Nebula and the Odin Clusters. In particular they have their eye on exploring the ERT3#R3321 asteroid belt in the ERT3 star system as there are rumours of ancient ruins.
Image Credits: PAYLOAD: ACE Pilot by Blazbaros – CC-BY-NC-ND 3.0,