Finbar “Echelon” Bandoran sat at his console pressing buttons and issuing orders. Even during this peaceful period, the Damage Control Officer still had to work. The SSD Atrus had suffered minor damage, but even then, repairs had to be made. He would have to authorize clearances, order repairs, and keep track of the repairs being made.

His control station was down in a trench on the bridge. Currently he had it to himself, for the weapons and shield controllers were not on duty. Though he would soon have to get up soon, and go to one of the repair sites. He would have to moderate it for a little while, make sure the things that needed to be done would get done. He gave his captain an estimate on how long the repairs would take, and by the Universe, he would make those repairs happen on time.

Pulling his datapad out, he checked the list of repair sites he needed to go to. First on the list: Hangar 5b. It had suffered a minor fire and one of the TIE racks were destroyed. Currently, the fighters that normally occupied the hangar were landed at an auxiliary hangar, and they were taking up valuable space.

Standing up he called above him to Admiral Stormz, who was now occupying the bridge. He was a wookie, and he towered above everyone on the bridge. He presence was intimidating at the least, but he seemed to treat his crew well.

“Admiral, I’ll be leaving to check the repair sites.” The Wookie nodded and continued his pacing of the bridge. Echelon proceeded toward the back where he swiftly entered the turbolift. Pressing several buttons, the doors closed and the pod sped down the shaft.



The Atrus was the largest ship at the time, so it was only natural to have a long turbolift ride. The longest ever in Echelon’s career. Even at great speeds, it took him a good ten minutes to get anywhere near the hangar, which was relatively close to the bridge.

The turbolift doors opened and Echelon stepped out, heading down the hallway. At the end of the hallway, he punched in several numbers on a keypad, and a door slid open. Stepping onto the upper railing of the hangar, he noted a distinct smell in the air which he soon identified at the smelling of welding.

At least I know they’ve been doing something.

He located the damaged TIE fighter docking rack, and was pleased to notice that it was fully repaired and back on the cieling. Down below him, several repairmen were sitting around playing what he thought to be sabbac.

For the love of the Empire!

“Men!” he called down below in a loud, deep voice, “what are you doing?!”

They were all surprised to see an officer above them, and one quickly stood up, saluted, and said, “Sir...we were just...”

“Just what? Playing sabacc! I wasn’t even notified that you had completed the repair, otherwise I would have put you to use! When did you complete this?”

Another one of the men mumbled, “An hour ago. We’re sorry sir.” Echelon shook his head and slowly walked down the railing toward the floor of the hangar.

“You see men. I’m just enraged because I’ve told that the head of the Navy that the repairs would be done in two days. If I don’t get the repairs done, then that makes me look bad. Think about it as if you were in my position,” he calmly said in front of the workers.

They all nodded and a look of fear spread across their faces like a plague.

“Now. Go call in TIE fighter squad Dire. We’ll see if this rack will work.” The workers scrambled to get the job done, wishing to not enrage Echelon once again. In a few minutes time, several TIE fighters were racked up in the hangar, but there was one empty spot where fighter should have been.

Echelon approached one of the pilots and asked, pointing to the empty spot,  “Where is the fighter that is supposed to be there.”

The pilot replied in a heavy Corellian accent, “I believe that ‘as Beta-4’s place. He seemed to have engine trouble and he was taking it slowly. He should be ‘ere soon.”

Sure enough, soon after the pilot replied, Beta-4’s TIE fighter entered the hangar and positioned itself on the rack.

The pilot climbed out and said, “This fighter is junk. I couldn’t push it past 10% without the engines overheating!”

Echelon thought about having one of the men repairing it, but they would be needed else where. Then again, Echelon had been meaning to get his Starfighter mechanic certification. Perhaps he could help.

“I’m sorry sir,” Echelon yelled up, “we can’t spare any mechanics, but I know a thing or two about repairing them. Perhaps I could help?”

The pilot pulled off his helmet and said, “Anything to get this thing back up and running.”

“Let’s do this.”



They lowered the damaged fighter to the floor, where Echelon could easily work on it, with a maintenance ladder of course.

“So, tell me what happened?” he asked the pilot. “The name is Echelon by the way. Damage Control Officer of the ship.”

“Ah. The name is Brevden,” he replied. Pointing to the TIE fighter he added, “Damage Control Officer of that ship...though, not sure what damage it has. Basically, I was travelling to the hangar when I noticed my inertia dampener was set to 100%.” The inertial dampener was a device that created its own gravity field which keeps the instruments and the pilot from being damaged by centrifugal forces in high velocity maneuvers. “So usually I have it set to 90%, so I can really feel when my fighter accelerates and decelerates. I lowered it down, and the fighter jolted a little bit. Then it just began to decelerate, and it started moving really slowly. I pushed the throttle forward, but the engines started to really heat up.”

Echelon thought for moment. “Did you have any trouble with your instruments afterwards?”

Brevden nodded. “My sensors freaked out on me. They said that the Atrus was 50 clicks away, when I could look and tell it wasn’t. Luckily, I made it here alright.”

“Yea. This kind of thing happens a lot. The inertial dampeners that the VE recieves are cheap, and they have a tendency to spark and cause them to go from 100% to 150% to 60%. Your instruments probably got jolted to much, and they lost their calibration, but I’m not sure why your engines stopped working...let’s recalibrate your systems then we’ll fix your engine.”

They headed over toward the front of the TIE where Echelon popped up an external computer matinence hatch, and hooked up his datapad into the system. Pressing the screen several times with a stylus, he quickly set the system back to factory default.

“Alright, start ‘er up. See if you can detect how close that wall is over there.” Brevden hopped in the vessel and flipped several switches.

Staring at his sensor’s display and replied, “Say’s it is about 20 meters. Good enough. I can calibrate her later.”

“Now that was the easy part,” Echelon said, “There could be a million things wrong with the engine. Let’s get too it.”

Closing the computer hatch, Echelon slid under the ball of the fighter where he opened the engine hatch. Inside, he saw the main reactor’s, the fuel tank, the propulsion electromagnet, and a jumbled mess of tubes and piping. The area smelt like oil, and he swore he could here a slight hissing noise.

The reactor pumps liquid hydrogen from the fuel tank and makes it into hyper-matter where it yields better energy when being transfered down rods of element 366. The element 366 reacts with the hyper-matter creating highly charged particles which are shot out of nozzles at the back of the ship. The tight stream and velocity of the particles is achieved in part by a powerful electromagnetic field.

“Mind if I light a cigarette?” asked Brevden, currently leaning against a wall.

“No...I don’t mind. The hangar is pretty contained and most of you crazy TIE pilots smoke anyway, so I guess I can allow it. It’s not good for you though.”

Brevden chuckled and lit his cigarrete. He took a big breath in and blew the smoke out. “You don’t believe that do you. I don’t trust those phony doctors.”

“You’re trusting me to fix your ship.”

“True...but I might come over there and take a look.” Suddenly, as he began to walk near where Echelon was working a small burst of flames ignited in the air near his cigarette. He jumped back in surprise, and let out a small cry.

“What the frak?!” he yelled throwing his cigarette to the floor and stamping it out. “My cigarette just lit something in the air on fire! Nearly burnt off my eye brows!”

“Really? Might have been some gas. I wonder what it might be coming from...” Then it hit Echelon. The hiss he had heard earlier must have been coming from the fuel tank, and that would explain the small explosion in front of Brevden. Hydrogen, after all, is extremely flammable.

Laying on his back, he reached up and twisted the release handle. In theory, this would stop the hydrogen from leaving the tank. As he did this, the hissing seemed to stop, and he knew that it had to be the hydrogen.

The hydrogen in the tank is a liquid. The tank keeps it this way by applying immense pressure, but if it begins to leak, it turns into a gas from the lack of pressure in the ship.

“The supply tube is leaking,” Echelon said crawling out from his workspace underneath the ship, “would you happen to have a fusion welder on you? I have a fusion cutter, but it doesn’t do the same job...”

“In fact,” Brevden said, still a bit startled from his incident, “I do.” Reaching down to his waist, he grabbed the handheld welder and handed it to Echelon.

“Thanks.”

Echelon crawled back under and continued his job. He was going to cut the pipe where it met the reactor and weld it back on. The joint had already been welded but a poor one at that. Probably done by a droid. Echelon had experience with welding. When he was with a mercenary group, he would often practice welding things in his free time. His practice finally paid off.

Echelon removed the electromagnet for it was blocking the joint, and he placed it beside him. He quickly cut the pipe at the joint, the place he was certain the leak was. Immediately, he grabbed the welder and carefully welded the pipe back on. He reached back to the release valve and twisted it.

The moment of truth...

No hissing. Just to make sure, he lit his fusion welder in front of it. A very unintelligent decision for if it had been leaking, he would have had burns all over his face. Luckily, there was no explosion.

Then he realized something. If the hydrogen had been leaking in space, wouldn’t it actually be a liquid because of the cold? And if so, that would mean it would have dripped on the electromagnet...

He grabbed the electromagnet. It was a long tube in a shiny, metal, cylindrical case, and he noticed that there was some corrosion on the outside. Mainly grit, but there may have been a few small holes.

That’s funny. Hydrogen isn’t corrosive. Unless they mixed it with something...

“Hey Brev,” he asked, “what is the fuel made of these days?”

Brevden thought for a moment, and then replied, “Hydrogen...and perhaps a bit of, what is it, acet-aceit- something acid.”

“Acetic acid?”

“Yea. That is the stuff. Keeps everything moving. It’s not to strong though. The pipes are resistant to it.”

Echelon grabbed the electromagnet a quickly cut it open with his fusion cutter. Inside, he saw a large coil of tightly wrapped copper, and on the copper, he noticed a grit. Like rust, but it was white and crystally. That might have been another problem.

If the electromagnet had corrosion grit on it, then it wouldn’t be as effective as before. Since the particles which propell the craft are partially shot out by the electromagnetic field, the corrosion could have been another reason why his engine wasn’t working as well.

Now how do I fix this electromagnet...I think I’ll just need to wash the corrosion out...no, the copper wires are damaged...and they can’t just be any copper wires, they have to be a specific gauge and lengths...no, this will have to be replaced...

Suddenly, he just remembered that they were scrapping an old TIE Interceptor down at Hangar 3b! If he could get there quick, he could grab the electromagnet out of that one!

“Be right back Grev!” he yelled as he ran full sprint towards the turbolift. He hopped in a pressed a button. The doors closed and the turbolift music began. It was kind of anti-climatic for the mood.

The doors soon opened and he sprinted down the hall once again. The hangar doors opened and he rushed in, to find the Interceptor just about to be hauled away.

“Wait!” Echelon yelled. “I need a part from that ship!”

He quickly explained his situation to the personnel on the ground, and they agreed to let him have the part. He grabbed his fusion cutter, pulled open the hatch, and cut the electromagnet out of the ship. As soon as he got it, he hurried back to the elevator, for he was anxious to finish this project.

When he returned to the ship it was a simple matter of attaching the magnet back on and hooking it up to the right wires. Closing the hatch one last time, he crawled from under the ship.

“Mind if I test it?” Echelon asked.

“No problem. You’re the one fixing it. Let me give you my TIE suit though. Wouldn’t want you to get out there and die.”

Brevden pulled off of his suit, revealing the jumpsuit underneath, and Echelon put it on. He then climbed in, and buckled himself. He pressed the ignition switch and the engines roared to life.

That’s good. At least I welded it correctly.

He then engaged throttle and pulled up on the yoke. The craft sped forward slowly at first, but it gained more and more speed. Echelon pulled out of the dockingbay and out below the Atrus where he engaged the throttle to full. The ship sped forward at lightning fast speeds! He pulled to the left and the ship went left. He pulled to the right and the ship went right. He smiled. He remembered how much he loved to fly. You had the freedom to do anything! Anything. Anything at all.

He fixed the ship alright. Boy did he fix it.

OOC:

Word Count: 2,532. I think I did well on this post. I included technical stuff, but my writing isn't too great. I'm proud of myself for the word count as well.