Private Past the Warranty

[Rance Draysom]

The Tears of Taloraan, Maintenance Deck 3-Besh

"Feth me," Rance swore, jumping back as a burst of scalding steam exploded out of a pipe right where he'd been standing. Rusted durasteel rivets, blown free by the sudden release of pressure, pinged loudly off the far wall. Warning klaxons, long and low, echoed through the maintenance decks hugging the starboard sublight engine; past the grating noise, Rance was pretty sure he could hear the crackle of flames, which was not a good sign. He took his jacket off and, holding it up like a shield, dashed past the steam jet, trying to find the root of the problem and do... something. "Someone find me Rhosen," he bellowed into his comlink. "Right fething now!"

The ships of the Verge Flotilla came from a hundred different systems and twice that many designs, but they all had one thing in common: they were well past their prime. All across the fleet, things were constantly breaking down, and there were seldom enough replacement parts to fully repair them - or enough trained technicians. Rance had plenty of experience jury-rigging ship systems so that they could get him through the next few hours, but that wouldn't cut it long term, and it was taking more risks than he liked with these big ships. When it came to the Tears, over 300,000 lives were on the line. He couldn't afford to make mistakes or do anything half-assed.

That was where Ned Rhosen came in. Rumor had it that the guy had been born in space, and had learned to fix every ship he'd ever set foot on since then. Rance hardly knew him beyond having seen the file the Fleet Marshals had on him, but he'd known immediately that they needed Rhosen on the Tears. He would be able to figure out the kind of repairs that Rance didn't have nearly the necessary experience or know-how to pull off... or so the supply officer hoped. This would be the first major test of Rance's theory and Rhosen's abilities, because whatever had just gone wrong had shaken the whole ship... and it seemed to be rapidly getting worse.

The maintenance deck high above the starboard engine was wreathed in thick black smoke, making it impossible to see down into the cavernous engine compartment. Hacking and coughing, trying to shield his eyes and throat by sweeping the choking fumes away with his arms, Rance felt around for the emergency breathing masks kept secured along each catwalk. He breathed a sigh of relief when he found the compartment... and then cursed violently when he found it empty. Who knew which past owner had taken it out and never put it back. After the bulk freighter had passed through so many hands, virtually nothing was where it was supposed to be anymore.

Coughing violently, Rance retreated to the door of the engine compartment. "Come on, Rhosen," he choked out. "We need you. Real bad."

Ned Rhosen ​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

The Tears of Taloraan // Private quarters

---

​

Ned looked at the broken piece of machinery and made his diagnosis, he moved over to his workbench where the majority of his tools were and reached for a one of his array of screwdrivers, it had seen better days - as had all of his things, but they had never let him down. "Never blame the tools, blame the mechanic" his father had always said when Ned was younger and pawning after newer things, he rolled his eyes whenever his dad had said this back then, these days he knew it to be true. Still, it would be nice to have a few newer instruments now and then.

He removed a few screws that held the old battered covering in place and was greeted with what he thought, melted wiring. Such a simple fix and one that Ned relished, when he got them replaced he was pretty sure the old MSE-6 Series droid would be running pretty well, and he was sure he had a lesser damaged casing for one somewhere, "Don't worry little guy, I'll have you sorted before you can say thanks... not that you can say thanks... or, well never mind"

The mechanic got to work removing the old wiring loom and locating a new one that would be usable, how he could find anything in his quarters would amaze anyone other than Ned and probably his father. The pair of tinkerers where renowned for their horde's of broken and half repaired machinery. Thankfully for Ned he knew where everything was, organised chaos one may call it.

As he was soldering the final bits of wiring together the old bulk freighter shuddered "Chit" exclaimed Ned as the rocking ship left him with a rather untidy solder, "Ahh that's gonna need redoing" he exhaled as he examined the misplaced lump of solder, messy though his quarters where he took an enormous amount of pride in his work and was never happy unless the work was perfect even if it was like this, a place no one else was likely to ever see.

It took a few moments to dawn on Ned that the solder might be the least of his concerns, whatever it was that shook the ship was not a good sign, neither was the fact a rather stressed looking crew member had just slid into his quarters looking as if he'd just ran from one side of the galaxy to the other, "Ned Rhosen?" questioned the man trying to catch his breath whilst propping himself up on a pile of droid parts "Last time I checked" came the response from Ned as he stood up "What's up? What was that?" the man took a few more deep breaths holding out his hand and then finally spoke "Fleet Marshall Rance Drayson needs to see you immediately, Maintenance Deck 3"

Ned didn't respond, he scanned the area quickly and grabbed a toolbox that was over half full and chucked a few more tools into it, there was only one reason he was getting summoned by someone and it was to fix something, and by the looks of the gentleman who had come for him it was urgent, he launched passed the man still catching his breath and headed towards MD3.

Engine problem guessed Ned as he was making his way through the maze of corridors that led to his destination. Thankfully, and he assumed on purpose, his quarters were not that far away, he could hear the klaxon now, it must have been kept away from any living quarters so as not to cause panic, either that or the rest of the alarms were faulty...

The mechanic arrived at the door to the engine bay where he found a rather dishevelled looking Rance, a man Ned knew only because he had seen him with many of the higher ranking officials (if you could call them that) in the fleet. He could see the man had been choking due to the smoke that had filled the room on the other side of the door, "No breathing masks huh?" was the first thing he said as he arrived dropping his tool box down, he was sure he had a couple of rudimentary ones here just in case "What happened?" he asked without looking up as he continued to sift through the bag, "Aha!" he exclaimed as he pulled out two rather battered breathing masks, one of which was in much worse condition "I really need to get some new ones of these" he sighed as he held them out, "your choice but I reckon the one on the left will only be good for dipping in and out of there"

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance waited as patiently as he could, which was not very patiently. For a brief moment he considered trying to vent the engine compartment, opening the local airlocks to space in order to suck out the smoke and kill the fires, but he dismissed the idea for now; he had no idea how extensive the damage was, and if he caused explosive decompression in the engine compartment, that would make everything infinitely worse. So he waited, trying every so often to peer through the smoke. He breathed a sigh of relief when Rhosen came down the hallway.

"No idea," he responded to the other man's question, and it was true; any of a thousand things could have gone wrong with the starboard engine, and he had no way of knowing which one it was without getting down there. Even up close, Rance might not be able to accurately diagnose what the issue was. He'd spent years breaking up ships, and he was good at identifying and salvaging key systems, but actually getting them working again on a vessel this big wasn't something he was nearly as good at. That's what he needed Rhosen for.

"I'll take the left," Rance said, reaching out and grabbing the less-functional of the two breathing masks; honestly, he was just glad that Rhosen had two of them in the first place. "We need you to be able to safely stay down there long enough to fix whatever's going on. I can duck in and out, bring you supplies as needed. But first, let's find out how bad this is. If we have to evacuate nearby decks, I want to know ASAP." He pulled the mask over his face; it was definitely the worse for wear, but Rance was used to that with Flotilla gear.

Pulling a canister of fire-suppressant foam off the wall (mercifully, one of them was actually still where it was supposed to be), Rance led the way into the engine compartment. He held a glow rod in his other hand, allowing the two of them to see a little ways ahead of them, though they could only peer a few meters through the thick smoke. Halfway down the catwalk, they came to a maintenance monitor hooked into the engine systems. A mess of burning ceiling tile had fallen in front of it; Rance hosed it down with the foam, drowning the flames.

"Whatever happened here, it's causing damaging feedback to all of the connected systems," Rance said, shouting to be heard over the klaxons, the roar of nearby flames, and the muffling effect of his mask. He was sweating heavily already; it was sweltering hot in the compartment. "Maybe a power surge, leading to conduit bursts and fires? But that can only be part of it, we've got further engine warnings. Maybe you can get into that console and get the diagnostics working. I'll keep the fire back."

Ned Rhosen ​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

Ned was listening to Rance whilst fishing around for a few items he could attach to the tool belt that was permanently located around his waist, there was little point carrying in the whole toolbox into what was potentially an inferno, besides he was to found of the box for it to get too damaged. He put the other mask on and entered with Rance. The heat hit him instantly and the smoke made it damn near impossible to see anything, Ned followed Rance to the monitor, he tried to input a few things but it wasn't responding, the mechanic unhooked a little diagnosis machine and plugged it into the console underneath, nothing.

"I can't get a reading on anything here with the heat, we need to get shut of these fires and the smoke" shouted Ned over the din of the klaxon and the rest of the background noises, "I'm guessing there is no emergency fire system or it would already have happened, and I'm guessing we dont have a fancy fire fighting crew, or they'd already be here" Ned knew that stating these things wasn't paticularly helpful in their current plight but it's the way he worked through things, almost as if checking things off on a mental clipboard, eventually he came to his conclusion "we're going to have to isolate the starboard engine and cut all power to it, we also need to shut off the air filtration system located here" he waved his arm into the darkness rather pointlessly "with the engine off it's going to mean we're a sitting duck but also we are going to be draining the other generators on the ship for everything from hot water to oxygen but it's a necessary evil, however they will not have enough power to recharge, so we will have to work quickly after that or..." Ned left the rest of that sentence up to the imagination of Rance.

"I'm not up to speed on the schematics and general set up of this place yet, is there a way of doing that from outside this room?" he hoped the answer was yes, most systems like this were located in or around the engine bay however on a ship this big Ned hoped it wouldn't be directly in the room, if it was it was going to make this job a whole lot harder than it already was.

Ned knew that he'd just relayed a lot of information to Rance, but he was certain the man would understand everything he had said, although he always thought everyone understood what he would say.

"Unless you have a better way to get rid of the fire? Not a massive strength of mine really, fixing things is easy, dealing with fire not so much" he managed a smile underneath the mask that clearly wasn't visible. They just needed to put the fire out, anything that happened as a result was just a necessity, at the end of the day even if the engine was completely useless after the fire went out, it certainly wouldn't be useful if the fire continued.

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance listened intently to Ned's diagnosis, doing his best to follow it despite the extreme noise bouncing around the engine room. "Got it," he finally shouted, giving the technician a thumbs-up. He lifted his comlink to his mouth, hoping that the bridge would be able to hear him over the chaos. "Bridge, this is Draysom. I need all power to the starboard engine cut. Reroute power from all non-essential systems." They would have some angry civilians to deal with, breathing stale air and using cold water for hours, but that beat exploding.

An instant later, the lights in the engine room guttered and went out. Soon, the only sources of illumination were the raging flames.

The klaxons turned off, too, which mercifully made it easier to hear. "Bridge, I said cut power to the engine, not the entire compartment," the Fleet Marshal clarified testily. A moment later, a reply crackled over the comm. "That wasn't us, Rance. The local conduits just overloaded. All of them. We can't access any of the maintenance deck subsystems; we're locked out." Rance swore violently. "Copy that. Sound yellow alert, get everyone back to their quarters, and seal the fire doors. We'll see what we can do."

Rance activated another glow rod and tossed it to Ned. "External controls just failed; the electrical systems are fried. If we want anything done, we'll have to use the internal mechanical overrides." Stalking back to the entrance, he lifted his mask, took a deep breath of fresh air, and then cycled the heavy door closed. Whatever they tried now was going to put them at great personal risk, but if they fell back and did nothing, that put everyone at risk. Other ships of the Flotilla were close by, so an engine explosion could kill half a million people.

"Okay," he said, blowing out air and trying to release stress with it. "If we want to knock out air filtration, we'll need to manually cut life support. That'll starve the fires, but it'll also kill the artificial gravity, and it won't reboot right away if we restart the system. We'll be working in zero G and limited to the air in our masks." Rance grabbed the ladder leading up to the top of the engine compartment, then hooked a foot around the catwalk railing to stabilize himself, so that he wouldn't drift when the gravity went.

"I'll stabilize the ladder if you can get up there and use your tools to interrupt life support. Unless there's another way."

Ned Rhosen ​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

Ned considered the options available to them, their task had become much harder with the lack of support externally. He wondered if there was another way to calm the fires, purely on the basis he didn't feel like suffocating to death today. Not that he ever did feel like suffocating...

He fiddled with the glow rod in his hand, quickly thinking through anything else that would help them, this level of pressure was new to Ned, he'd had moments in the past that were literally life or death but that tended to be purely for him not for about half a million souls. Getting the fires out was the priority. With that dealt with he could assess the damage and see what needed replacing and trace back to where the initial problem was.

"OK" muttered Ned, "OK, right, OK....here's the plan" he paused for a moment making sure that he wanted to go through with this, "I can reboot the system which will get rid of the fires, however if I'm right in thinking I should be able to kind of instigate a false reboot protocol speeding up the system restart... I think" Ned was pretty sure he could bypass the initial start-up tests the system did to ensure nothing was damaged, in theory the system is working now so it should be fine.

"The quicker we get it back online the better, I don't think there's enough juice in these things, especially yours, to wait for a full reboot" he pointed at his mask with the glow rod. Ned climbed the ladder that Rance was footing for him, he had everything he needed on him to do what he intended, he just needed to borrow some wires from something unimportant once he found his target, hopefully that would be as easy as he was hoping it would be.

When he got onto the next level he scanned the area looking for his quarry, the life support system was clearly labelled on some panneling that would need to be removed, a rudimentary failsafe to stop someone accidently rebooting the system. Ned removed the covering which was more of a struggle than it should be, "probably hasn't been opened since it left the shipyard" thought Ned as he eventually forced it open. He pulled himself into the cavity and assessed what he was faced with. The reboot itself was relatively easy, follow the instructions engraved into some sheet metal riveted to the machine, pretty straight forward however the tricky part was speeding up the reboot.

Ned opened up the main casing on the system to reveal a wiring set up that was suprisingly well set up, a part of the ship that had never been striped or replaced. Incredibly the good news kept on coming for ned as he noted a spare spool of wiring that must have been left behind from the initial set up, he genuinely couldn't have asked for a better slice of luck. He pulled out some wire strippers and got to work effectively hotwiring the system. After he was finished he called out to Rance to brace himself, took a deep breath and started the reboot.

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance really hated not being in control, but he was coming to realize that there were times he just couldn't avoid it.

He'd been raised that, if you wanted something done right, you did it yourself, and he still lived by that whenever he could. When he was made chief supply officer for the Flotilla, he'd started out by trying to handle every little thing personally, to make sure that it was done to his satisfaction. But he'd learned quickly that doing things that way wasn't just inefficient, it was downright impossible; there was too much to do, and too much he simply didn't have the skills or know-how to accomplish alone. He'd had to learn to rely on others and trust in their abilities.

Still, standing at the bottom of the ladder, Rance found himself tapping his foot in impatient nervousness. He hated waiting, hated feeling like there was nothing that he could do. So when Ned finally called out for him to brace himself, he breathed out a sigh of relief; at least something was going to happen, one way or another, and the interminable waiting would be over. "Got it, go ahead!" He just really hoped that Rhosen's plan would work; it would give them a much better chance of survival than the highly dangerous alternative.

Life support kicked out in a hard reboot, and Rance held on tight as the artifical gravity disengaged. A rush of escaping air blew hard through the engine compartment, scattering suddenly weightless tools and scrap parts across the cavernous space. It took the smoke with it, and the fires, suddenly starved of anything to burn, died out. The only lights left in the chamber were the two glow rods, and they shed only a few meters' worth of illumination, so Rance couldn't yet see how bad the fire damage had been. That made him plenty nervous.

The air in his mask was starting to get stale, so the Fleet Marshal breathed out a heavy sigh of relief when the gravity abruptly kicked back on. Metallic pings filled the compartment as all of the items that had drifted off dropped back onto the deck plating, and Rance felt his feet meet the catwalk securely again. Ned's override had worked - rather than an hour, the life support reboot had kicked in after only about two minutes. It would take time for the compartment to fill with breathable air again, but at least they weren't working in zero G.

He just hoped that bypassing the safeguard systems to speed up the process hadn't had any unintended side effects.

"Great work!" Rance called up the ladder, holding it steady so that Ned could get back down. "We'd better get down to the engine room floor. That way we can see how bad the damage is... and maybe figure out what the feth went wrong." He turned to the second ladder, the one leading down from the catwalk they were standing on. Producing a third glow rod, he activated it and dropped it down the ladder, so that they could see the bottom. The metal deck plating was blackened and twisted by heat, some of it still glowing orange.

Rance shook his head. "I really hope nothing expensive got as karked up as the floor did."

Ned Rhosen ​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

Ned let out a huge sigh of relief, he hadn't been 100% sure how long the reboot would take, or if it would actually work in all honesty. Ned couldn't let Rance know that though, it had worked and that's all that matters.

"No problem" answered Ned as he clambered back down the ladder to Rance's side, he watched as the man tossed the glow rod down to the floor below showing the extent of the damage to the flooring that was visible, "I wouldn't bet against that" replied Ned in response to the Fleet Marshall's concern. Ned looked along the catwalk to see if there was another ladder to head down, he didn't think his footwear would handle to heat still in the metal plates below.

He found one but without a glow rod to throw down he had no way of knowing the state of what awaited him, he climbed down slowly pausing every now and then to assess what he could see with the glow rod he'd stuck into his belt. The section he had come down seemed relatively OK in comparison and as the floor came into view he could see it was reasonably OK, some of it was still its original colour.

Ned moved along the path checking the hulking machinery in front of him as he went, the closer he got to the original dropped glow rod the worse everything began to look, for the most part it was more smoke damage with a bit or scorching but the flooring at the bottom of the ladder looked completely destroyed, whatever had been burning there had been burning at an incredible heat.

These systems were built a lot around heat recovery due to the sheer amount of heat created by the sublight engines, with that in mind the materials used to build them and the area's around them could stand a lot of heat. That led Ned down a few possible roots, he voiced a couple of them to Rance, "This wasn't a normal outbreak, the damage to the flooring and component housing in ridiculous, either someone was storing something down here that they shouldn't have been that raised the temperature of the fire here, or there's the potential that someone made a massive mistake in an attempted repair" he paused for a moment to consider the options, "if someone had for instance used sizzler paste instead of a bonding paste it wouldn't have been an issue until the ignition happened, and then whoosh all hell breaks loose" he looked around to see if there were any tell-tale signs of that kind of damage but most of the metalwork he was too far gone, it was an error he'd seen once before but in all fairness the guy who did it had awful eyesight and was no longer with them because of his mistake. "It could also have been sabotage" added Ned which he hoped wasn't the case, they could deal with cargo being in the wrong place or the wrong substance used, they are general mistakes that although costly meant no harm, sabotage though was a different matter, and if it was the case it wouldn't end here if they had failed at their plan.

"Have you had any general maintenance carried out here recently?" Ned looked at Rance to see what his reaction was.

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance followed Ned to the further ladder, where the damage to the flooring below had mercifully been less extreme. Still, as they backtracked through the engine compartment, the Fleet Marshal could see that there was plenty that had been fried. Although the immediate danger was over, the Tears was dead in space until they could figure out just how extensive the repairs would need to be - and get at least the bare minimum done. Rhosen was already on the case of trying to figure out exactly what had gone wrong.

"The Tears only came to us a few weeks back," Rance replied. "We gave her a basic maintenance once-over, replaced the things she absolutely couldn't run without, but I get the feeling that the previous owners didn't take the best care of her... or check up on her too often." He would have loved to have stuck the ship in drydock and fixed up every little thing, getting the vessel to be as good as new, but they had neither the time nor the resources for that. Continuous patch jobs were the most they could manage.

"I sure fething hope it wasn't sabotage," Rance muttered, crouching down to inspect the damage. "Better a stupid mistake than someone trying to scuttle this whole thing before it even starts." He spotted something beneath a charred console, and moved closer to investigate. Carefully he reached a gloved hand past the jagged, still-hot metal and grabbed the small object. When he pulled it out, the pieces clicked in his head, and he swore. It was a small piece of a standard fuel canister.

"They stored the karking fuel too close," he said, showing Ned the fragment. "A console overload or something must've ignited the stack of fuel canisters." Most likely, some worker had been busy moving the fuel when he or she had been called away for something more urgent, leaving the pallet dangerously close to the heat and electrical discharge of the sublight engine and the many power couplings surrounding it. All it had taken from there was for one minor thing to go wrong. It was an understandable mistake, but a costly one.

Rance raised his glow rod, trying to peer at the bulk of the engine. "How bad do you think the damage is?"

Ned Rhosen ​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

Ned shook his head in disbelief as Rance showed him the fragments of the fuel canisters, a laugh escaped from him as he did this. "Wow! Someone wasn't the brightest lightsaber in the galaxy" exclaimed Ned with utter disbelief, he was however pleased that it wasn't an attack on the fleet in its infancy.

The mechanic took his glow rod in his left hand and began to dig around some of the more damaged area's with his right hand, every now and then swearing or retracting his hand quickly as the residual heat still hadn't quite left the area. He didn't say anything for quite a while whilst he assessed the job at hand. Ned was lost in his work, his eyes flicking in all directions as he tried to make a well judged guess on what had happened here in the first case.

Eventually Ned spoke after what must have felt like a lifetime to Rance, "OK, I think I've traced back what the initial issue was, and I think I've got an initial assessment on what's repairable here and what isn't" he knew that his companion wouldn't want to hear that some of it wasn't repairable here but that was just the way it was, "It looks like the sublight engine power transfer conduit blew out, this would have caused the shaking due to the engine stalling causing a loss of power, the reason for this could be a number of things but it looks like there may have been an attempt at modifying the engines to get more power out of them making them unstable, also the waste recovery system" he pointed to some of the many exhausts leading off the engine, "which looks like a Sabrina model, has failed - probably as a result of the fire" Ned paused for a moment as he surveyed the rest of the area they were in, he continued on as he fiddled with the glow rod, "obviously there is a lot of superficial damage, which although isn't great doesn't really concern me at the moment, however in the long run you're looking at replacing a massive amount of flooring, cat walks, laddering, protective casings, signage... you get the picture, the protective casings could cause an issue though, obviously there's a degree of radiation that comes with these engines and although most of that is contained with the casings that has now been lost, realistically if we can get this fired up again we need to keep this place empty without the correct protective equipment"

Ned waited a few moments for Rance to catch up before he continued, "As for what I can do in the here and now? With a bit of fettling and some look I might be able to sort that conduit out and get it up an running again, if I can't, I'm reasonably sure I've got one in my quarters which although wouldn't be a direct match should get us out of a sticky situation. I can repair the pipes damaged on the waste heat system so as to stop any steam just firing out into any poor soul walking by although I would need to a welder to do that and maybe some scrap tubing to replace the bits that are shot to pieces, again if we haven't got any I can use some of my personal collection" Ned again paused to let Rance soak up that information before continuing on, he felt as if he was performing a monologue at the theatre, "naturally if I can fix those things we should be able to get the engine fired up again safely, however we are going to have to run it way below what we normally would, there is no way of me assessing the full engine here to see what they may have done to it and even if I could I wouldn't necessarily have everything here to reverse the work done to it, I would suggest running all the engines at a lower percentage until we can get them fully assessed - in an ideal world there would be a record of the works done here but I'm guessing the work wasn't carried out by a recognised ship yard and therefore won't be recorded" Ned looked at Rance to see what he made of the information.

"Oh I forgot, with the lower power band comes a lack of heat for the recovery system to... well... recover, so it won't be able to help in the reduction of the ships running costs, basically you're going to want to start restricting energy use of pretty much all kinds otherwise with amount of people we have onboard this thing we'll drain the generators and that will be that - pretty big design flaw huh?" the mechanic let out a sign of exasperation, "that is the best scenario, if the engine fires up we should be ok to get somewhere to do a more thorough assessment, but there's still the potential that the work done to it or the damage sustained just now will render the engine useless, we can run on reducded power for a period but not the long run"

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance was quiet as he watched Ned work, letting the man figure out how much had gone wrong with the system. Rance probably knew enough to get the engine to turn back on, but after the overload and the fire, who knew what consequences that might have. He needed to be careful when there were so many lives on the line, and that was why it was good to bring in an expert. Ned was thorough, and he knew exactly what made these big ships tick. It was all basically magic to Rance, so as far as he was concerned, Ned was a wizard.

When Ned began giving his report, Rance's heart sank lower with every word. This seemed to be the way things always went in the Flotilla; they could keep the ships running for a while, slow and sputtering but alive, but sooner or later the big repairs they'd been putting off would catch up with them. Mentally he tallied off all the things that needed replacing: the power transfer conduit, the radiation casing, the waste heat recovery system, maybe even substantial parts of the engine itself. They needed a fully-equipped shipyard.

They didn't have one, and couldn't afford to dock the fleet at one for even a day. What little wealth they had was in their ships.

"Okay," Rance said, blowing out air slowly to keep himself calm. The air circulation in the engine compartment was finally normalizing, so he pulled off his half-functional breath mask and took a deep breath. "I don't know how we'll get all those long-term repairs done, but we'll figure something out. I'll work on it, reach out to our contacts, see if we can find a drydock and some money for repairs. For now, let's do what patch jobs we can and get moving. The Revwiens want us out of their system ASAP."

He'd say "out of their hair," but since Revwiens were giant plant-people, they didn't have any.

Rance called up on his comlink, asking for whatever repair parts were available to be brought down. There would be enough to replace the conduit and patch the waste heat system, but beyond that they would just have to ration power usage, just like Ned had said. People were not going to be happy, but it still beat living under Sith occupation. "So what's your story, Rhosen?" Rance asked while they waited. "How'd you learn to do all of this, and how'd you get mixed up with us?" Beyond killing time, he was genuinely curious about the guy.

With any luck, the pallet of replacement parts would arrive soon, and they could get to work.

Ned Rhosen ​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

Ned listened as Rance sent his orders out over his comlink, he couldn't help but be slightly in awe of the man, the pressure he must have on him to keep this whole operation going but it didn't seem to phase him. Ned was more shocked by the fact that he then asked about Ned and how he'd ended up here, it amazed him that he had the time to ask these questions although it didn't twig in his mind that this was partly just to pass time whilst they awaited the ordered items, however good Ned was with fixing things and understanding how they work, interacting with people wasn't a strong point.

"My er... story?" he repeated, spinning the glow rod between his fingers, if it wasn't so annoying it would probably be quite impressive. "There's not really much to tell if I'm honest" he distracted himself with beginning to strip down the conduit with the tools he had to hand, as he worked he relaxed a bit and started to speak with more confidence, "I was born on a ship somewhere in the outer rim, I'm not really sure where, dad worked as a scrap trader in the rim, so we just kind of floated from place to place swapping and selling things to get by" Ned paused considering whether to mention anything about his mum and how she hadn't made it giving birth to him, how his father blamed himself for not docking the ship to get the help needed, how Ned blamed himself for being born, but he decided to leave it out for now.

"Obviously I don't remember any of that, just what dad told me, my first memory is dad showing me how to strip down an astromech droid when I was a kid, I guess it was some of the stuff he used to trade with but at that point he was working maintenance on a Frigate, I remember he used to take me pretty much everywhere, I guess that's where I learnt to do most of this, just though helping him" he went quiet for a little bit as he tried fettling a part out of its housing and then carried on, "I think the ship changed hands and the new guy wasn't happy with me shadowing dad, I don't know what happened, but we ended up on a corvette with dad in charge of keeping it in the skies, from there we kind of skipped ships every now and then going from small ships to medium ships, dad never really talks about it so I'm not sure what kind of work the ships were involved with but I guess it wasn't great, whenever I ask he just says he had to do what he did for us to get by"

Ned had never really spoken to anyone about these things, he was on a kind of auto pilot and couldn't stop himself even if he'd wanted too, "anyway over time we started moving on to bigger ships again, but we would both be working, that allowed us to start dealing in buying projects to fix up and moving on for a profit if we could, truth be told I've probably got more credits in my living quarters in rusted old droids and blasters then I have actual credits to spend, most people seem to think its madness but there's something about fixing these old things from era's gone by, the things they have seen, and then just falling into disrepair waiting for someone to show them the love they need to restore them" Ned stopped as he realised he'd gone on quiet the tangent, he was embarrassed that he'd just told his whole life story to effectively a stranger although he was aware he hadn't actually explained how he'd arrived at the fleet, so he continued on at a quicker pace to try and tie up his blubberings, "so er... over time I wanted my own space, I'm no pilot though so was looking for work and dad put some feelers out with a few of his old buddies and I've been working for them really on a few ships, doing maintenance and some scrap dealing like the old man used to until recently they retired and I needed somewhere new to call home, they pointed me in your direction and here I am" Ned didn't really know what to say after that, and he'd stripped everything he could until the parts arrived, so he started messing with a wrench and looked at Rance, "what about you?"

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance listened quietly, nodding his head to show that he was paying attention. A lot of people who came to the Flotilla were just desperate folks with nowhere else to go, but there was another kind of folks: the kind who were born to the void, who worked on ships all their lives, drifting from planet to planet without really calling any of them home. It seemed like Ned was that kind, always on one freighter or another, picking up the skills that were useful to nomads - and keeping ships and droids running was chief among them.

Finally, as Ned finished speaking, he nodded again. "Sounds like your dad did right by you, best as he could. They say a good man's hard to find out here on the rim, but from what you've said, I'd say he qualifies." Rance shot the mechanic a smile. "Lucky for us that you wanted some space of your own, because we need the skills you've got. Today was a particularly dangerous example, but mechanical things go wrong all the time around here. They get old, they break down, and we need someone like you to survive."

The replacement parts still hadn't arrived, so Rance didn't see the harm in giving a little of his own story in turn, since Ned had asked. "Me? I was born on Telos IV, but I don't remember much about it. A group of Outer Rim warlords burned it when I was really young, and my parents ran with me and my sister. We drifted around for a long time; they bought a freighter, and we made money hauling cargo wherever we could. That's how I learned to fly, to haggle, to shoot... the works."

Rance shrugged, trying not to remember too many of the painful parts - particularly the confrontation that had come next. "When the Sith Empire took over out here, the rest of my family decided that they'd made it stable again. They went back to Telos, started their lives over. I didn't want to live under the Sith, so I didn't go with them. I stayed out on the fringe, ran cargo, did odd jobs... got mixed up in plenty of bad business, but somehow came out alive. Then I heard about this idea, a free fleet, and I just fell into it."

He shrugged again. "Guess they liked me, because they put me in charge of supply. It's been... an adventure."

At that moment, the doors of the engine compartment slid open, and a binary loadlifter droid tromped through. On its huge, forklift-like arms was a pallet of tools and replacement parts, including a power transfer conduit and plenty of scrap to patch the waste heat system. It also held a fusion lantern, which shed much more light over the darkened compartment than the little glow rods. "There we go," Rance said, getting up from the pipe he'd been leaning on and stretching. "Let's see what we can fix with what we've got."

Ned Rhosen ​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

Ned listened to Rance as he fiddled with one of the components he'd taken apart, he imagined that the man must have many interesting stories based on what he was telling him at the moment, something Ned didn't really have. That was another reason for him joining the fleet, hopefully it would allow him to make some stories of his own other than fixing things.

Fixing things was the order of the day though and as Rance came to a close the door slid open and in came the loadlifter with a pallet full of goodies as far as Ned was concerned. The fusion lantern was a much appreciated inclusion to the ordered parts and illuminated a much larger portion of the section they were in, Ned took the chance to have a more detailed look around.

"Hopefully most of it" he replied in a cheery tone, "it really does look like a lot of superficial damage, I guess we got lucky to a point" he realised that the parts that would need replacing were still an astronomical amount, but it really could have been so much worse.

Ned got to work straight away, the engine bay was filled with the sound of hammers, wrenches, a fusion cutter and a plasma welder. The work was hard at times with the sheer weight of some parts, and Ned was thankful for the help from Rance. It doesn't matter how good you are as a mechanic, sometimes you need someone else to help you.

Eventually the power transfer conduit had been installed, the damaged one lay on the pallet in its place, "if you aren't going to do anything with that I wouldn't mind keeping it, like I said I think I could strip the one I have down and maybe we'd have a fully working spare if the parts are transferable which I think they would be" he turned back to his work and continued welding the pipework in place to get the waste recovery system back on. As he finished the last weld he inspected his work, happy that the welds were perfect he looked over at Rance, "we should be able to get the power back on now without the system tripping, and then it's a case of firing up the engine and seeing what happens" he began clearing the area of the clutter that had occurred during the repair session as Rance did what he needed to do.

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance let Ned lead the way, handing him tools and parts or helping him steady whatever he was working on. Between the two of them, they made relatively quick work of the repairs, though it was far from easy; despite the cold breeze now pushing out of the air recyclers, Rance soon found himself sweating heavily, partly from the heat of the fusion cutter and partly from the heavy lifting and nonstop labor running parts back and forth. He was in pretty good shape, but it seemed he'd be even fitter if he kept up work like this.

Ned's optimism was contagious, and despite his worries about how they would find the money and parts to fix some of the longer-term damage, Rance found himself agreeing with the mechanic - it could have been a whole lot worse. The Tears would keep flying, at least well enough to get out of the system and keep up with the fleet a while, and for this day - even this week - that was what counted. Beyond that, though, he would have to put his supply acquisition skills to the ultimate test in order to find the things Ned needed.

"Sure," Rance replied, eyeing the fried conduit dubiously. "If you think you can get something useful out of it, it's all yours. We always need spare parts." He had worked in several different shipbreaking yards, so he knew a thing or two about pulling valuable components out of broken equipment, but it would take skills beyond his to get anything useful out of that overloaded mess of electronics and machinery. But if anyone had those skills, it was probably Ned. Maybe he'd be able to turn that part of the disaster to their advantage.

Rance nodded as Ned declared that they were ready to turn the power back on. "Okay. Here goes nothing." The Fleet Marshal took a deep breath, then called it in. "Bridge, this is Draysom. Please bring the power back on in the starboard engine compartment." There was a moment's wait, and then a humming through the hull as wires resumed carrying current. Then, one by one, the banks of overhead lights turned back on. Rance clapped Ned on the back. "Great work," he said, grinning widely. Step one had gone well.

Now for step two. "Okay, bridge, that went well. Let's go ahead and bring the starboard sublight engine back online." Another wait. Then, slowly, the engine began to turn, arcs of bright blue electricity playing across its surface. It sputtered and choked at first, only gradually coming back up to ignition, but after a tense minute or so it blazed bright again. It was still clear, though, that the damage wasn't entirely repaired. Rance and Ned had done what they could, but the long-term impact would have to be confronted eventually.

"Okay," Rance said, blowing out a breath. "Thanks, Rhosen, that went well. But how long can we wait until we need a repair facility?"

Ned Rhosen​

 

[Ned Rhosen]

"Thanks" replied Ned as he claimed the mess of damn near destroyed parts, he was already looking forwards to seeing what he could do with them. The mechanic nearly smiled when the power came back on without frying anything, now it was a case of anxiously waiting for the engine to come back online, he'd done what he could but was it enough?

Ned couldn't hold back a smile when she finally fired up. Between the two of them they had got the ship operational again, at least partly. Ned patted one of the panels shielding the engine as a sign of appreciation towards the machinery. His optimism dipped slightly when the question was asked, just how long would the engine last before if completely gave up? "I honestly can't give you a definitive answer" he responded although he knew it would not be what Rance wanted to hear, "we could be talking weeks, it could be months, it depends on how hard we have to push it, I mean if you push it too hard we could be talking days"

Ned grabbed a rag and started wiping down his hands, not that it made much difference, the combination of oil, carbon and whatever else was covering his digits just moved the dirt around a bit, he offered his hand to Rance "I'm sorry I don't have a more definitive answer for you, is there anything else I can help you with whilst I'm here?"

 

[Rance Draysom]

Rance sighed as Ned gave his answer. There was no telling exactly how hard they would have to push the Tears in the weeks to come, because there was no way to know what they would face. They might be attacked by pirates, run out of a system by the local government, forced into an asteroid belt... or they might have totally smooth sailing for a while, though in his heart the Fleet Marshal really, really doubted it. No matter what, though, the engine was going to fail unless they found a more permanent solution. It was only a matter of time.

Still, they had accomplished the only thing that mattered for now: they had kept the Flotilla flying for one more day. All of their struggles meant that the people of the nomadic fleet could remain free and independent for a little longer. If they could do that every day, for as long as they had the strength to do it, they could give these people better lives than the nightmares they'd had to run from. Whatever troubles got in the way of that, they would handle them as they came up, fight them with whatever tools they had.

Rhosen had proved that he was a good ally in that fight; without him, the fire aboard the Tears might have crippled one of the fleet's largest vessels before it even began its journey. "Don't worry about it, Rhosen, you did good. I don't know what we would've done if you hadn't been here." Rance clapped him on the back again, shooting him a warm smile. "I'll see what I can do about getting access to a real repair yard. Between the two of us, I think we can keep this ship running for a good long time to come."

The End​