That Part Is Upside Down

[Lira Dajenn]

Lira sat in the Archives of the Jedi temple on Ossus surrounded by half a dozen datapads and sitting in front of a single holoprojector that showed the image of a small starship of very sleek design. She smiled at it, writing something down on the piece of flimsy in front of her. The books that lay around her were all technical specifications for different starships and vessels of that like, each one had been carefully chosen or picked out by her because she either found the starship they belonged to pretty, or the technology that had gone into them was simply amazing.

She had been in this position in the archives for nearly four hours now.

Several of her peers had come to try an get her to do something else. Minnie had come and tried to convince her to come lightsaber training, Michael had come and tried to get her to go for a walk around the Academy, and Sophie had shown up and prodded her to come haze some of the newer padawans. Lira had turned them all away however

This was after all of interest to her. She didn't do this because some Knight had assigned her, she didn't do it because she felt like she had to. Lira did this because she enjoyed it. This had been her major in Prak University after all. Starship design and construction. She had been passionate about the designs of Starships since she was a girl.

Ever since she had seen her first Star Fighter Lira had been completely obsessed with them.

Their sleek design, their curved forming nature, the quiet rumbling of their engines. Lira found something incredibly calming about the vehicles, and the technical specifications of the ships fascinated her to absolutely no end. So it was here, buried within the mountains of technical specification that one of the Jedi Knighs found her.

“Padawan?”

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Lira nearly jumped out of her skin when the voice broke through her ears.

She had a habit of getting lost in whatever she was doing, whether it was reading, designing, or just plain goofing around Lira usually could only focus on one thing at a time, but when she did focus, it was entirely. The voice that broke into her thoughts shattered whatever line of thinking she had been currently working on and out of pure reaction the young Padawan dropped her pencil.

“Uhhh.” Was all she managed to say at first before she slowly turned around in her chair.

The girl had clearly been startled, and the Jedi Knight that had done the startling made no move to apologize or even placate the girl, she simply stood there watching the young woman react in the oddest of ways.

Luckily for Lira, she finally managed to snap out of her daze with a quick shake of her head.

“Knight Elspeth.” Lira said cautiously. “How can I help you?”

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Jedi Knight Bethany Elspeth wasn't exactly known for her keen interest in padawans. The woman had been a Jedi Knight for nearly three years, and in all that time had never taken a Padawan. It wasn't that Elspeth disliked Padawans, or even younglings, she apparently taught youngling classes all the time. She had just always stated that to take on a padawan was simply too much responsibility, one that she was not yet ready for.

Of course Lira already had a Master, two in fact, so she very much doubted that Elspeth was here seeking to take on a padawan in the form of Lira Dajenn. The keen look in the Twi'lek womans eyes however told Lira that she did indeed have a plan for her.

“I was told you've taken an interest in the technical archives.”

Lira looked at the woman, then at her desk.

Yes.

She had indeed taken an interest. The holo-projector alone would be proof of that, but everything else around her would back that theory up even further, after all she had enough technical manuals in the space around her to make up an entire library.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“Yes Ma'am.” Lira said in the most innocent voice possible.

She had done nothing wrong, but there was something about the Twi'leks womans eyes that made her feel sheepish and small. She doubted that Elspeth was here to scold her, Lira had been on time to every class and every training session. This was all done on her free time and she had been getting plenty of sleep. As far as she knew both Hal and Avalore were okay with this and no one would think she was doing anything wrong.

Right?

Right.

She was studying, learning about what interested her. That was part of a Padawans learning, to study up on things that interested them. Avalore had studied healing, Hal and studied the Jedi Code, and she was studying starships and engineering. There was nothing wrong with this, there was nothing Elspeth could do to punish her, and if she did, Lira would appeal it to the High Council Itself!

“The Specifications interest me.” She explained further in hopes of staving off whatever Elspeth had to say. “I studied at Prak University in order to become a starship engineer.”

 

[Lira Dajenn]

The woman frowned for a few moments, as if she had heard something unpleasant. One thing about Elspeth was that she was apparently very...structured. The Twi'lek Woman was well known for her tight moral standards and extreme adherence to the will of the council. The Jedi Knight was what many people would many call a stone cold schutta, and indeed many outside of the Jedi Order who knew her by name did just that whenever her name came up.

“Yes. I heard about that.”

Of course she did.

“Before your rescue by Knights Eden and Terrano.”

She seemed to frown at the first name, and smile at the second. Odd. The reactions were usually the opposite, with people loving Avalore and thinking that Hal was a bit of a bore and a frowny frank. Lira had never really disagreed with those opinions, though she had a great deal of respect for both of her rescuers, she leaned towards neither one of them, but considered both fine instructors.

“How far did you manage to come in your studies before you were...incapable of continuing.”

The woman was oddly enough trying to be sensitive. Everything that Lira had heard about the woman told her that wasn't usual, which made Lira thing that there was some sort of agenda here. Her eyes narrowed.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Lira didn't want to toot her own horn, but she had excelled in her time at the University and had actually been more than halfway to graduating.

“Quite far Knight Elspeth.” She said quietly. Quantifying exactly where she had been at in her studies was difficult. The Young Padawan actually knew most of what went into designing and building a ship, but she also didn't know some of the more...elaborate specifics, and to pair with that failing she also had absolutely no hands on experience in doing anything. “I was near graduating, but I wasn't able to do any of the actual physical work, just theoretical.”

Oddly enough, the week before the riots had broken out Lira had signed up for one of the more hands on courses, and had she been able to complete it she would likely be able to take a space ship apart and put it back together by now, something that irked her to no end.

Instead however she had been plucked from her life, taken away from her studies, and brought into the Jedi academy where her studies focused on meditation and waving around a stick made of plasma. She of course understood the appeal of that, and some of it was quite fun, but the passion of mechanics still called to her, hence why she was in this library studying.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“I see.”

Elspeth said cryptically as she eyed Lira.

Her gaze slowly crept over to the piece of flimsy that Lira had laid out in front of her. On it was a design for a ship that Lira had sketched out, a small spear tip like fighter that seemed almost squished together. A cross section of the interceptor was laid out to the side of the flimsy and dimensions were scribbled all across the sketch, along with a dozen notes about which parts would be used and what would be best for a ship of that type.

The Twi'lek looked at the drawing for a moment, furrowing her brow before returning her attentions back to Lira. The green woman smiled slightly, then shifted on her feet to take on a more relaxed stance.

“There is an opportunity for you, Padawan.”

Lira took on a confused look.

“The Hangar bays here in the Temple are filled with ships. Fighters, interceptors, freighters, and half a dozen repulsor vehicles are sitting around in need of repairs. The crews here are simply overworked, and with the current War with the One Sith, its difficult to recruit more engineers.”

Slowly the Padawan was understanding what Knight Elspeth was asking. The crew members and Jeid technicians that worked on the ships and vehicles here in the temple were not enough to meet current demands. Ossus was being flooded with equipment that needed repairs, and with Lira having a technical background...

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Her eyes went wide as she realized what Elspeth was trying to get at, or rather had straight up told her. She was giving Lira a chance to full fill her dream, giving Lira a chance to do what she had wanted to do since she was five years old.

She jumped at the chance.

Literally.

The young padawan was out of her chair faster than one could blink, sweeping away the piece of flimsy with her designs on and knocking over a stack of datapads onto the floor with a loud clatter and clang. The flimsy landed on top of them. Lira smiled a wide toothy smile, her eyes filled with glee. There was a great amount of hope in her eyes as she began to speak.

“You mean I can work on ships? Even though I haven't before?” Her lips moved faster than her thoughts.

There was no way that Elspeth could take this away now.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

Elspeth smiled, she actually smiled!

The Twi'lek woman who was usually carved from cold Marble seemed amused by Lira's enthusiasm, so much so that her lips quirked into what many would consider a grin. Perhaps she was not as cold as most people assumed. A question formed in the back of Lira's mind, why had Elspeth been the one to deliver this news? Why not Avalore or Hal? Heck why not one of the Ship Technicians, wouldn't that have made more sense?

Mentally Lira shrugged, right now she didn't particularly care as long as she got to do this.

This was her dream after all.

“Yes. My understanding is that you will be apprenticed under one of the technicians. Though this is not to take away from your other duties. Training in the force and ways of the Lightsaber are to come first. This is secondary to those.”

Lira nodded furiously.

She didn't need a social life. She would train, eat, sleep, train some more, then spend the rest of her time in the hangar bays doing what she wanted to do, what she had spent her entire life wanting to do.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“Well? Go. I will meet you in the Hangar to make introductions.”

Lira nodded furiously as Elspeth corralled her to get to the Hangar. For a moment the young woman looked at the mess she made, but then she shook her head and just headed off towards the Hangar Bays. She would come back later and clean up, no one ever came to the Technical Archives so it was unlikely that anything would be disturbed, and it would be even less likely that anyone else would clean up her mess. There were several droids that cleaned, but they did not sort the archives or the data within, only swept up messes.

Rushing out to the Hangar the Silver haired Jedi didn't noticed Knight Elspeth searching through the datapads that Lira had knocked over. She stacked some of them to the side, placing a few on the table until she found the piece of flimsy where Lira had been toying with ideas.

The green Twi'lek woman looked at the technical drawing, eying the dimensions and the small scribbling notes that Lira had written over the three pages of design work. The Twi'lek quirked her head to the side and thinned her lips in consideration, licking them slightly as the sorted the papers in order and then neatly lined up the edges. With four swift folds she placed the pieces of paper in her robe and hurried after Lira.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

She made it to the hangar with a surprising grace considering that she had nearly sprinted across the entire Temple grounds in order to get there.

What she found was very fitting to the situation. The entire Hangar bay was stuffed to the brim with Ships, vehicles, and all sorts of engines that were half torn apart. Interceptors, fighters, and even one of the new stealth craft lay all around the Hangar in various states of disrepair. Lira stared at it all in wonderment, her eyes searching quickly across the various craft. She could identify them easily enough, and knew well what was likely wrong with each of them.

Certain ships had dependency on certain systems, those systems usually broke down fairly quickly. The X-wing of old had relied on its mechanical S-foils to lock an unlock and often the gears that allowed it to do so became broken or jammed up. The Old Tie Fighters most often received damage to the Solar Wings, scrapes and cuts tearing away at the lining and reducing the ships speeds.

Ships of this generation were no different, and Lira was pretty confident that most of the ship stored within this hangar only required small fixed and tweaks until they were ready to fly once more.

With undue confidence, the Padawan stepped into the hangar.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“Hang on there Missy.”

A voice broke Lira's concentrated determination.

“Who are you, and why are you coming into my hangar.”

Lira turned around to face the man that had spoken to her. He was wearing grease covered overalls, his hands were calloused and looked like they had been broken several times, his belt was lined with tools, and his face had a kindness about it that she had never seen before. The Young Padawan was about to open her mouth, when the man interrupted her, clearly dismayed about the fact that his work was being interrupted.

“I swear, every week we get one of you padawans running into the hangar bay to take a ship on some sort of adventure. You think just cause the ships been sitting here for a while that its okay to take on your own little trip!”

His accusatory tone made her think that he might have known what she did last week with a group of Padawans on Korriban, but then again she very much doubted that since the incident hadn't exactly been broadcast.

“Its dangerous don't ya know. These shi-”

The man kept talking for some time.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

After being berated by the grandfatherly man for nearly five minutes about how Padawans had no respect for technology and didn't understand that starships needed to be taken care of and repaired every once in a while the man finally came to a close, his last few words punctuated by him jabbing his finger into his hand in a circular motion to demonstrate what would happen on an X-win if the engines went out mid atmospheric entry.

Oddly enough, Lira had been taking mental notes.

It was clear that this man knew what he was doing.

In the back of her mind she wondered if this was the man that she was to be apprenticed to. He seemed to know quite a bit about Starships, particular fighters and small craft. From what she could see of this particular hangar that was all that was in there, no vessels larger than twenty meters seemed to be present and that hinted at a particular expertise that this man likely had.

“So you can't just take hips outta 'ere, you don't know if its completely fixed or not.”

Lira was startled to realize that he had actually come to a close.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“Right.” Lira said nodding her head in agreement. “Thats not why I'm here. If I wanted to steal a ship I would just go to the South Hangar, less security and the access keys are on a whiteboard in the coffee room.”

She blushed suddenly as she realized what she said.

To his credit, the venerable engineer simply burst out laughing. He seemed to think it an enormously funny joke, but then again to him it likely was. She knew that he wasn't a force user, even her rudimentary skills could tell her that. Yet he wore the patch of the Order, and that meant he was a trusted individual.

She assumed that he had seen hundreds of Padawans come through one temple or another, had interacted and probably even befriended some. The man was likely older than her father and knew more about how the Order ran than she did. Maybe he liked Padawans with attitude, or maybe he found amusement in the fact that his hangar wasn't the one that was the least guarded. Either way, she seemed to have found her way to his good side already.

“Knight Elspeth told me I should come here.” She began to explain.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“Elspeth?”

The man mirrored the name as if it was foreign to him.

Lira got a shaking feeling in her heart, her nerves started to tighten, and her face scrunched again. Had the woman been playing tricks on her? Was this an elaborate prank set up by her peers that Bethany Elspeth had been convinced to join? Were they out to humiliate her in order to get her out of that damned Technical Archive?

Lira's eyes started darting around, trying to find her fellow padawans hiding behind some containers or perhaps some nearby bushes.

“Oh!”

Suddenly the man had recognition on his face.

“You mean Bethany.”

Relief crawled beneath Lira's skin and she very nearly let out a massive sigh of relief.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“Yes Daeryd, she means me.”

The voice of Knight Elspeth broke out into the air like a shrill banshee's call. It wasn't that the womans voice was evil or shriek like, but on the jungles of Ossus in the heat and compared to Daeryds voice it was like someone was trying to strangle her. Lira cringed slightly as she felt the womans presence behind her grow to an almost monolithic state, the towering Twi'lek looking down at her, and then over to the tall venerable mechanic.

“This is the girl I told you about.”

They talked about her?

She wasn't that interesting, at least not really. Lira hadn't been on Ossus for long, and in that time she had hardly had time to make an impression on anyone, least of all Jedi Knight Elspeth who hardly spoke to Padawans or interacted with them. Had she been watching her in secret? That would have been odd, very odd.

“I believe she has what I didn't.”

 

[Lira Dajenn]

The old mechanic looked from the Twi'lek, to Lira. His eyes narrowed slightly and his lips tightened. He took on a very contemplative look and began to scratch his thin as though he were in deep thought. Lira herself began to to get nervous, she felt as though there was something that they weren't telling her, as if there was some big piece of the puzzle that she was missing out on, she didn't like that feeling.

Shifting slightly she asked. “What you were missing?”

Elspeth shot her a look that was none too pleasant, one that said 'Be quiet the adults are talking.'

Sheepishly Lira became silent again pointing her eyes to the interior of the hangar where she began to study one of the ships that lay inside. It was an interceptor, one of odd design that Lira had never seen before. She supposed it had been built for the Republic to counter one ship or another. From the design points it had she guessed the Rendili had made it, the angular shape and wings hinted at that design.

A military ship, converted for Jed use.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

The Twi'lek nodded as Lira focused on something else, and Daeryd gave a singular smile to the young girl to reassure her.

“You think she has it? It's a rather rare talent, even among you lot.”

Elspeth looked down at Lira and nodded.

“Yes. She's exhibited the signs.”

Daeryd looked down at Lira again, and then caught her attention with a wave of his hand before turning around. The big engineer wandered into the hangar and pointed towards one of the fighters, leading Lira over towards it.

She still had absolutely no idea what was going on, and indeed she was growing more and more suspicious. Even though this is what she had been dreaming about for many years, the circumstances that were currently going on were simply too strange to ignore, and truthfully she was getting a little bit worried about everything that was happening.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“Alright Lass, listen up now.”

Lira looked up at the man, giving him an odd look.

Behind her Knight Elspeth took up a curious stance. She looked closely at Lira, but remained far away from the fighter that she couldn't actually be of any help if they were going to be doing any work. As soon as Lira looked at her however Daeryd snapped his fingers and called her attention back to him. What were they doing? She thought she was supposed to work on ships, not be creepily observed by a Jedi Knight.

“I've been working for the Jedi Order for fifty years. I've been a ship mechanic for that entire timespan. In all my years, I have only ever met one Jedi who had an ability that Bethany here thinks you got.”

Ability?

She didn't have any special ability, not that she knew of anyway.

This was her first time near a starship, save for the one that Avalore and Hal had rescued her on. Any Talent she had was purely in book learning, she didn't know anything special regarding starships, at least not anything Daeryd wouldn't already know.

She was so confused.

 

[Lira Dajenn]

“I never quite understood it myself. I asked one of the Masters at the old Temple on Coruscant once and they didn't have any answer besides the usual will of the force mumbo jumbo, but this lad. The one with the special gift, well, he could touch a starfighter, a freighter, a ship of any sort, and instantly he knew the parts of its whole.”

Lira's eyes bulged.

The venerable mechanic let out a loud laugh at her response and nodded.

“Aye, that was my reaction. All he had to do was focus on it, and he could see everything the ship was. It's engines, its circuits, its reactor, everything was an open book to him. It was like had seen the damn Blue Prints!”

It was easy to tell that Daeryd was slightly jealous of this ability, and Lira could easily guess why that was. The ability to instantly tell what a starship was made of? Finding the weakspot of a ship, searching for repairs, doing anything with a vessel would be near instantaneous.

Out of amazement Lira looked at her hands.

Did they really think that she could do the same? Did they think that she had the capability to do what that man did? The Padawan looked over to Elspeth who had that same smile on her face that she had had in the Archive when Lira had her burst of excitement. She nodded to Lira, and bade her to act.