Old Memories

[Karacan Rigten]

Now with Kuat Drive Yards in Ferrons hands, things had slowed down. Though the company had shrunk quite a bit since its prime, which left him with a workforce less than he would have wished for, he needed a way to try and gain more credits, more... attention. If people could see what he was doing with Kuat Drive Yards, perhaps they would start flocking more and get some ships. Luckily, Ferron anticipated this slowness of time before even taking over the company. One of the items he acquired before taking over the company was an old Nova Courier, a very nice ship made from the last days of Gallofree Yards. He wanted to make it his personal ship, but he feared even trying to launch with the junkbird would tear it to pieces. Instead, at least for the time being, he planned for it to be taken apart so that Kuat Engineers could reverse engineer it. It's a useful little ship, and could be a great icon for KDY Freighting.

The ship had been towed to Kuat Drive Yards Orbital Array, and sitting in a private hangar for some time. Before that, it was sitting in a graveyard, as Ferron had no real place to hold it. Because of its condition, Ferron made an executive order for it to be pulled to the Orbital Array immediately, for concern of pirates and rogue salvagers. Ferron was walking into the private hangar as he was followed by a few of KDY's top Engineers. The area was strictly off limits, except to Ferron and a small maintenance crew to keep the courier from completely falling apart. "Hit those lights," Ferron asked to one of the Engineers, who switched on the primary lighting of the Hangar, which was otherwise manually turned off unless the maintenance crew was working. The hangar lights switched on, showing the sorry state the Nova Courier was in. The place was like a vacuum. Rarely ever did one of the entry doors to the hangar ever open, and the hangar doors were always shut with their blastdoors, making the air stale.

 

[Karacan Rigten]

Ferron stared at the ship for a moment as the Engineers regrouped on him, to look at the old ship as well. "You want to bring this ship back into the galaxy, Ferron," asked the leader of the three KDY Engineers. He looked a bit puzzled and unsure why this little trash heap should be stamped with a KDY logo. "We need a good, small, personal freighter for the name. Right now all we have are old model Destroyers from an era long gone. And we don't have the manpower or the funds to make them yet. But this," Ferron pointed at the Nova Courier, wagging a finger at it, "this will get us some eye catchers. We gotta start small to get big, boys. And this little ship will sell. It was good back in its prime; all we have to do is make sure it's efficient, not too expensive, and defensive-worthy. Maybe later we can make a missile boat variant out of it." Ferron proposed many ideas to the company when he started, although they weren't just ideas. Ferron enacted many orders on the company. Before Ferron, the company had died down a bit, there wasn't a lot of research going into new ships, as the previous owner was working with other organizations to get plans and build ships. Ferron, on the other hand, wanted KDY in the spotlight... by itself.

"Well then? Let's get to it," Ferron suggested, as he started walking over to the Nova Courier. The Engineers soon followed, but were unsure if they would even be able to get inside; did it even have power? Ferron had folled with it only a little before today, in the entire time span that he had ownership of it. He couldn't say he knew the ship, but no one could say they knew more about it than Ferron did. Ferron approached the underside of the ship and tried to find the control panel for the ramp. But once he did, it wasn't like it was going to work. Eventually he found the manual release panel, which seemed to have been used by the maintenance crew and opened it. He turned his head to the side slightly and smiled, huffing a breath before turning back and grabbing the release, forcing it down and the ramp slowly lowered, with a loud clunk as it unlatched. "I suppose this means we're in business? Haha!"

 

[Karacan Rigten]

One of the engineers shook their head as they left the group, surveying the outer part of the ship and walking around with a datapad, writing down key information, before approaching the ship at certain points to take in a deeper look or approach a data panel. "Mister Troste, how often has the maintenance crew even been inside of this ship," asked the head engineer before. There was still dust on the inside of the ship. Sure, the maintenance crew wasn't a janitorial service, but the dust showed they may not have done a lot of work considering how long they had been assigned to the ship. "I don't think they did a lot of repairing, I didn't want them to go through the effort of bringing the ship online," Ferron said as he slowly creeped up the ramp as the Engineers followed him. "They might have made a mess what you needed to read in order to figure out how to reverse engineer this thing. Uh, you got a light?" The head engineer and the other engineer brought up their lights and turned them on. They were on the lower deck, but the ship still looked like a ghost ship. It gave off an eerie feeling, and they hadn't even reached the bunks or bridge yet.

"They mostly did patch up jobs... like if the ship had a hole, or a weak spot, nothing really to get in your way," Ferron finished as they continued down the corridor. They stayed quiet for the most part, passing some storage lockers which the other engineer made a hand at to notice the lose storage locker door. Once they arrived at the Lift, they knew the power was out. "I think the crew said there was a maintenance shaft here with a ladder. "Ferron turned to the side and hinted at the engineer to help him as they removed a panel off the wall. It was thick, and heavy, but true enough it lead beside the Lift with a ladder. The engineer took the first spot to ensure the safety of Ferron and they all got into the shaft. At the top, the Lift doors were left open, probably from the Maintenance Crew.

 

[Karacan Rigten]

"Alright," Ferron said, getting the engineers attention, "down that corridor leads to some of the bunks and the lounge." He turned, "that way, leads to the cargo area, bridge, and weapons stations. So, the big question is, how long?" The Engineers looked at Ferron, not completely understanding what he was asking. "Haha... I mean, how long do you think you could figure out the ship so we can get it produced in our shipyards?" The head engineer couldn't help but huff, stifling a laughter. "President Troste, with all due respect. This has been a nice little get together, but we need to haul this thing to one of the shipyards and take it apart, piece by piece. We can't just look at a comm panel and know the rest of the ship. Even if the ship has its designs or schematics on it, it doesn't even have power. The power systems in this hangar may not even be compatible with todays standards. I mean... We can document the systems we find before we tow it, and get you a project update, but there's really very little we can do here." Ferron raised his eyebrows at the engineers initiative, but it seemed he raised good points. "My apologies, mister..." "Matthews," the engineer responded. "Mister Matthews, I'm no engineer, but I'm sure you can appreciate me handing you the reigns to my ship? Either way, a progress report will do nicely, it may help get some supplies to the shipyard you take it too, so we can start on a diagram and fill in the blanks after. But, will she be in working condition after? I was hoping to making her my personal, private ship, after all."

The Engineer looked around in the dark with the illuminated areas by the flashlight, pondering to himself. "To be quite honest and perfectly blunt, sir? No. This Courier is lucky to be standing. There's no doubt we can figure out what the guts are inside and remake it, but the best I can do is get you a working prototype. The rest of this ship will be dismantled, unless you want to pilot your own coffin." Ferron understood the engineer and respected his judgement. It was too bad Ferron wouldn't be able to reuse the old ship, but it would probably become problematic early on or down the line. Its old systems might even need replacing which Kuat Drive Yards don't even produce, so an entirely new model with KDY hardware should do the trick. "Alright, well, how long will you need to document what you can? After I leave you all to your jobs, I will call in a tugboat." The engineer nodded, replying, "Give us a few hours, by the time the tugboat gets here I think we'll have done just about all we can. Is that satisfactory to you, sir?" Ferron agreed, nodding back, "Sounds good to me, thanks.... Matthews," Ferron smiled, patting the man on the shoulder.