Velocity (nehantish)

[Arya Ravenwing]

"Krasst! Frelling dren-soaked piece of... of dren!" Arya banged on the hyperdrive coils with a hydrospanner, but the only result was an unsatisfactory thunking sound. Twisting around and grabbing the metal support beam she was hanging upside down from, the smuggler righted herself and pulled her long body out of the service hole she'd been working in.

Stomping her boots on the deck plating, the dark-haired woman made her way to the cockpit of her chevette77 freighter. She'd barely made it out of an Interdictor cruiser's gravity well, but after the panicked jump she'd made to avoid being caught by the Empire... well, she had no idea where she was, and her hyperdrive was fried.

Luckily, or unluckily, she found a nearby system she could sublight to. Nehantish. Information in the navicomp was scant, but she knew that Nehantites were some of the handiest mechanics in the 'verse. If she could just get there, they could fix up the Wing of the Raven just fine.

If she could get there.

Arya plugged in the coordinates and set the auto-pilot. She needed some shut eye. Imperial spice traps were nerve wracking, even for her.

----

Ten hours later, she was back in the cockpit, asking for clearance to land. Control fed her a set of coordinates, and she started the freighter down. She needed fuel now too. "Frelling krast on a dren stick." She gripped the yoke and followed the beacon in.

[Tevit Ramastan]

Tevit wiped his brow on the back of his arm, effectively drying the crop of sweat he had formed while also leaving a blackish smudge from the oil and grease which had been on his forearm. Such was the life of a mechanic. Flipping his spanner over in his paw, the Nehantite dropped it back into his belt, then stood up, glad to finally have the hunk of junk he had been working on back in working order.

It had been a long week. It always was since he no longer ran his own shop, but had to work for another. Anauri had decided to go exploring a few months back, and Tevit simply couldn't handle the rebuild shop all by himself, so he sold it and made his way back home, where he promptly fell back into the same line of work. Oh, what he wouldn't give to be a spoiled billionaire like his cousin. Gray-furred tightwad bastard... Tevit shook his head. That was no way to think of family, even if it was true and J'ktal had been holing up all manyer of strange aliens while at the same time turning down his request for some investment cash for his own local shop. Tevit would never understand the rich.

Just a few more months of saving and he'd have it on his own, Tevit kept telling himself. Just a few more months of living in his ship, working double shifts, and eating cheap college student fare, and he'd have enough to put down on his own shop. Glancing up at the clock reminded him he onyl had three more hours before he was finally off-shift. Three hours, that was, unless they got an incoming emergency repair job, and that wasn't likely unless the military was letting rank amateurs pilot again.

But, no sooner had the yellow-furred mongoose loosened the belt on his coveralls and plopped back into the old, ratty sofa that ran along one of the shop walls than the flashing red alarm lights went off, and he hauled himself back up to a stand. The massive overhead doors folded back, letting the harsh sunlight pour in around the silhouette of a ship whose engines sounded in dire need of repair. He heaved a sigh of defeat. It was off-world, and the owner probably didn't fancy following normal busniness hours. Looks like it was going to be another all-nighter. Strapping on his tool belt once more, Tevit waved off the afternoon supervsor, ran a paw through his hair which only succeeded on leaving a few more oil streaks, and then stepped up to the entry hatch of the ship, ready for the owner to come out yelling and screaming that his perfect spacecraft had blown something under no fault of his own doing. That was always the story, and it was never, ever true...

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya hit the release on the ramp, and started walking down it as it descended. A yellow-furred Nehantite was buckling on his tool belt as he walked towards her. She stuck out her hand for a firm handshake. They both had grease stained hands. "Blew a hyperdrive coil, and I nearly bled my sublights dry on the way over here. Care to give me an estimate on cost?"

The smuggler glanced casually around the area, marking exits and personnel. Eyes wandering back to the mechanic, she offered up a tight smile. "I'm sort of in a hurry. This put me behind schedule. You know how it is."

[Tevit Ramastan]

A woman. Ugh, if there was anything worse than a foreign man in a hurry with a broken ship, it was a woman in the same predicament.

Tevit looked at the ship again and rubbed his chin, an apprehensive look about his face. "Fuel we've got in abundance," he said, "but it's the coil that'll be the tricky thing. Haven't got any stock right now, dor does this whole hemisphere. I'll have to take it apart and repair it. That's the only way you're going to get it back in working order in less than a week. Supply lines don't reach too well out here."

Looking back to Arya, he shrugged his shoulders. "Came to the right shop, though. Me and the boys can probably have her back up in a day and a half, maybe two. Nothing sooner though, and I won't have a price estimate until we get the hyperdrive dismantled. Sorry about your schedule, ma'am, but you're not leaving tonight. Better find yourself someplace in town to stay. Arnie up at the desk knows a few good places. Anything you need off your ship before we start crackin' her open?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya frowned. Suppose it can't be helped. "There's nothing I need to get off the ship, just stay out of the cargo hold. My employers put a seal on it - if you break it I'll have to kill you." She stretched a bit, feeling the weight of the blaster in her shoulder holster.

"Arnie knows a few good places, huh? Best go see him then. Thanks for taking me in on such short notice."

[Tevit Ramastan]

"Not a problem, as long as your credits are good," Tevit replied, a slim smile on his own face. With a curt nod, he let Arya be Arnie's problem, and focused on the ship.

It was an odd ship, one he had never worked on before, but they were able to dig up service and schematic manuals on their database, and with diagrams in paw, Tevit and a team of tour other Nehantites went to work. The hyperdrive was shot, at least their diagnostic devices told them, but getting to it would be quite a trick. A few hours later, most of the external panels around the engine bay were off, and all that could be seen of Tevit were his hind paws hooked around a bracing bar as the rest of him hung inside the ship itself.

Cursing, Tevit hauled himself back out and threw a socket wrench against the wall. "Stupid piece of crap foreign design!" he vented his anger, but in words far less civlized. "Jurn, can these panels come off?" he called across the shop to a brown-furred male sitting on the couch eating a sandwich.

"Nope," Jurn shook his head, "not unless you wanna cut 'em away and then weld 'em back on. Owner prob'ly wouldn't like that too much."

"No, she'd probably pitch a fit," Tevit muttered under his breath, then pounded a fist against the hull. "Gar, the only other way in is through the inside, and I don't think we can get there from the main access ways."

"I might be able to fix it from out here," a voice from behind him said. It was Piper, the youngest member of the crew, and the only one who had gone to college of any sort. He had been brought on to help with the more sophisitcated electronics, and when he had an idea, the others had learned to listen.

"It might not be the drive, but the electronics. If I can reprogram it, we might be able to get it to work. I mean, we didn't smell anything burnt, or notice any singe marks, right?" Piper asked, and the others had to agree. "So, let me hook up the system to it and I can see what I can do."

Tevit was skeptical, but if it meant they could be done sooner rather than later, he would allow it. The supervisor had gone home, and that left Tevit in the rank of senority. It was a decision he would quickly come to regret.

Only minutes after Piper had hooked up his computer, the young technician's eyes went wide behind his glasses, then he frantically tried to unlink, but it was too late. He had misread the power capacities of the system, and overloaded the relays. Everyone could smell the smoldering wires before they burst into flame, and from there it was a mad rush to put out the fire as the riring leading to the hyperdrive burned down like the fuse to a bomb in a movie. Fire extinguishers blasted, but only enough to keep surrounding areas from catchign light, right up until it passed through the bulkhead going into the cargo bay. Tevit hesitated for a moment, but diecided that Arya would be slightly madder if her ship burned and exploded than if he opened the bay. A few blows from a heavy wrench later, he was through the doors and putting out the fire inside.

He emerged again, hacking and coughing from the smoke, but the fire was out, and now they had the task of cleaning up the burn marks and running new wiring through the ship in addition to fixing the hyperdrive. At least the good news was that they could get to the proper access panels now. Waving the crew in, Tevit issued them their orders while he made it out to the waiting room to get a soda from the machine to help quench his thirst. Just his luck that when he looked up, Arya was back. A dumb, "Errr," escaped his lips as he tried to think of what to say. He was hoping to have finished the job before she found out what happened. "Um, about your ship..." he started, hoping the rest of the words would come to him.

[Arya Ravenwing]

The hotel she'd been directed to was nearby, and not infested with insects. Both were excellent selling points, but she still felt that the price had been a bit steep. After haggling over credits with the desk manager (she hadn't gotten anywhere, must have been the fatigue), the smuggler headed back over to the shop to keep an eye on the Wing of the Raven.

The mechanic was there, a damp soda can nestled in his paw. He flinched, and stuttered, "Um, about your ship..."

Arya frowned, hands stuffed into her jacket pockets. She couldn't quite see the freighter through the veiwing window from this angle, but there were a few smoke darkened mongeese walking about. "I can already tell I'm not gonna like this." She tugged a hand through her short black hair and walked towards the window.

"What the frell do you think you're doing!?" Arya pounded a fist on the glass before she could catch herself, but thankfully her hand rebounded without breaking anything.

[Tevit Ramastan]

"Hey hey hey!" Tevit tried to calm her down while sqeezing hismelf between her and the window so that she didn't break it.

"You've got soem serious low-grade wiring in that thing and it just caught fire," he explained, quite miffed. "Gar, you should be glad we were able to out it out before the whole thing went up in flames. Sheesh, and who designed that thing? It's nearly impossible to even get to the hyperdrive, let alone get the coil apart and fix it. We're replacing your wiring with far better grade stuff, and cleaning it all up, so just chill out, and let us do our job."

Indignantly, the mongoose mechanic took a swig from his soda, and hoped that Arya would understand. So far, she still didn't know the cargo bay had been opened, and that's how he wanted to keep it.

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya took a deep breath to try to relax. "Sorry - guess I should be glad the whole thing didn't blow up."

Her eyes narrowed as she saw a mechanic carrying a coil of wiring walk to the back of the ship, and then disappeared as though he'd walked into the cargo bay. "You didn't..." The angle wasn't quite right, but the Nehantite she'd watched didn't appear around the other side.

[Tevit Ramastan]

Crap, she knew. Crap crap crap. Tevit had to do some clever talking, and fast. "We should be done by morning," he tried to divert her attention. "Some of the exerior panels might requie some new bolds and mounting brackets, but we've got a guy working on that already. Don't worry, we've got it all under control. As soon as we get the coil out, we'll be able to real get moving. Now, if you'll excuse me, I've got to get back to work."

In the back of his mind, Tevit prayed that she wouldn't follow him, but he could already tell she wasn't fully buying it.

[Arya Ravenwing]

Ramastan was talking fast, distracting her from watching the other mechanics. She shook herself lightly, staring at him a little wild-eyed. "Shadra is going to kill me. What..." What have you done, was the thought stuck somewhere in her mind, as Arya pushed past him, breaking into a run towards her now open freighter as she hit the duracrete.

[Tevit Ramastan]

Aw crap. Things had just gone to hell in a handbasket.

"We can explain!" Tevit called back to her, but she wasn't listening. "The fire went through the bulkhead, I had to open it, or you wouldn't have a ship right now. I had no choice!"

He couldn't see the look on her face, but from the expressions of the rest of the crew, things did not look good at all.

[Arya Ravenwing]

Panic quickly faded into a blanket of fury, which faded into panic again as she reached the cargo bay. The seal that Shadra the Hutt's lackeys had placed on her bay door was broken jaggedly in half and part of it was lying on the floor. Her mouth hung open at an odd angle, not realizing that her blaster was clutched tightly in her right hand.

Mechanics scattered, but one was stuck inside the hold where he'd been pulling out the fried wiring. He ducked behind a crate.

The blaster dropped to the deckplating of the hold as Arya sank down beside one of the five large crates that were strapped securely to the floor. There was a moment of silence.

"Frelling frelled piece of frell!"

Her commlink beeped softly. Arya blanched.

[Tevit Ramastan]

Tevit slowed to a stop behind her, his mind reeling as to what to say. He didn't know what was in the crates, and so far none of them had been disturbed, and he hoped she could at least see that. Inside, Dobar carefully looked up over the edge of one crate and saw the blaster lying on the floor beside Arya, but he still didn't dare move.

Tevit came up behind Arya and carefully stepped on her blaster, pulling it away from her with his bare footpaw. "Um, yeah, see, we didn't have much choice. We'll write a letter to whoever the shipment belongs to explaining what happened, if that helps."

Carefully he inched the blaster further from her, not fancying getting shot that day.

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya held up a hand. "I have to take this. Please be quiet and don't say anything."

She pulled her commlink out and clicked to answer the transmission and open a channel. "Arya Ravenwing here."

"You are late." The voice of Shadra's Devorian majordomo rattled through the comm. "Excuses will not save you this time, smuggler. Shadra is most displeased that her goods have not reached Kuat yet."

"Yeah, about that. Would you believe I busted my hyperdrive evading Imperials, and then had my ship almost exploded by Nehantite mechanics?"

There was a pause. "No. Get the shipment to Kuat by tomorrow or there will be a death mark on your head." The channel was broken, the majordomo had terminated the link.

Arya threw the commlink across the hold hard enough for it to break on impact with the wall.

[Tevit Ramastan]

The situation had officially gone from crap to holy crap.

Tevit's mouth hung upen and he toned dumbly, "Uhhhh, um, It's not going to be able to be that far from here by tomorrow, even if we work all night. Sorry." He really had no idea what else to say, but he carefully stepped back anyhow, pulling the blaster farther along with him. Some day he would learn to say no to dangerous women, but evidently he still had problems with them.

[Arya Ravenwing]

She glared at him. "You better hope so." Arya stalked out of the hold to eye the seal.

There might be a way to fix it back together... she picked up the piece from the floor, and carefully fit it into the other piece. Nope. She had an idea though. "You got any paper lying around, Ramastan? And I want my blaster back."

[Tevit Ramastan]

How did she know his... d'oh! His name was written on his coveralls, that was right. Leaning down, he picked up the blaster from the floor, but carefully removed the power cell from it before handing both back to Arya so that she wouldn't shoot him.

"Here," he said. "And, paper? Yeah, we've got some up in the office, but, what for?"

[Arya Ravenwing]

Arya looked at her blaster, noting the missing power cell. Angrily she stuffed it into her sholder holster. "A paper rubbing. Popular with kindergarteners with trees. I'm going to help myself."

She stuck the half of the seal into her jacket pocket, and pulled out her pocket knife, flipping it open. With a few expertly placed motions, she separated the other half of the seal from the door. Arya looked at the mechanic, and glared at him. "What are you doing standing around? Get my ship put together. If anyone touches those crates, I'm taking you all down with me."

[Tevit Ramastan]

Dobar hastily returned to clearing out the old wire, then running the new stuff while Tevit ordered the others back to work. The hyperdrive was easily enough accessed throgh the cargo bay's back wall, and in a few minutes, Piper and another tech-savvy worker were already hard at work disaaembling the otuer shell to get at what lay inside.

For hours they worked, and when there were too many workers to actually work on the drive itself, they set themselves about cleaning up the smoke and fire damage, all the while under the ever-watchful eye of Arya. Test after test was performed on the coil, and each time it failed and was taken back apart to be rebuilt. Piper, who had actually been part of the morning crew, wound up asleep on the couch, havign nodded off while working. Tevit took his place, but didn't pretend to know as much as the technician did, so he patched in a call to an old friend, who helped walk him through the process.

Finally, as the sun began to rise again, the coil tested positive, and the crew worked to put it back in. The engines fired, then faltered and quit, and it took another hour of tuning and calibration to finally get things right. But, in the end, the job was deemed a success, and Tevit himself topped off the ship's fuel reserves before finally writing up the bill. It might seem high, but after the amount of overtime put in, it was actually a bargain. Along with the bill he would present arya with the power cell to her blaster as a gesture of trust, though that didn't mean he wasn't going to get shot over it anyhow.