Before he left me, he told me how they were using the newly built Dreon tracker to send out a signal into Space in hopes of finding a returning blip. He proudly explained how he had broken up the surrounding territories into quarters and planned to travel down each of them in search of their ship. His confidence in the contraption gave me hope. At the same time, Maric met me for another day of Katarian flight school. I didn’t want to go. Despite my lack of enthusiasm, I pretended to act interested in improving so I wouldn’t hurt his feelings. I tried to follow his instructions, but lost my focus every time he spoke off subject or interjected our course with one of the program’s preset obstacles, such as giant asteroids that appeared out of nowhere. It was both discouraging and frustrating. Sometimes, I swear he was distracting me on purpose. Perhaps he had more of his father Zaric’s orneriness in him than I had originally thought. We were done for the day and started to leave the simulator when we ran into Gaelan.
