Pherik ‘Serpent’ Zail typed up the last of the day’s reports in a datapad and handed the item to a nearby junior bridge officer. It had been a long day on board the
Surprise and the ship’s temporary First Officer was wrecked. There was still a lot to do to recover from yesterday’s first strike against the New Republic, and while it was successful, it had been messy.
Captain Trykon was nowhere to be seen, and was no doubt dealing with the VIP prisoner they had taken. Meanwhile Zail had to deal with running the bridge, and while he secretly enjoyed being in command of the
Strike-Class Cruiser, no matter how briefly, he was glad that his shift was over.
“That’s it,” He announced, forcing himself not to sound weary in front of the crew. “I am heading to my quarters. If anyone needs me just...” And then Serpent trailed off in mid-speech, for a young Senior Crewman appeared before him, saluting smartly.
“Yes?” Asked Zail, not recognising the youth.
“Sir! You are needed down in the hangar bay!” Said the subordinate.
Part of Serpent screamed at him to just wave the kid away and head to bed. Fortunately, his dedication to duty won out. “Very well, I shall stop by on my way to my quarters,” He promised, and proceeded to do just that.
-----
Zail stepped into the hangar bay, a small hall washed with white lighting, that somehow managed to house two full squadrons of TIE Interceptors. Most of the fighters hung above him in their launch racks, but several were down on the deck, tended to by techs affecting repairs.
As he entered, Serpent was approached by a rotund man in dirty overalls, the ship’s most senior mechanic. Though his name was Owen Hallis, everyone called him ‘Tenor’. Whether that was an indication of any operatic skill, Zail had no idea, but he knew that the man approved of the name and decided to use it.
“I got a message, Tenor,” Asked the XO. “What’s going on?”
The larger man shook his head, clearly frustrated. “It’s a mess, sir. Those kriffing Scree did a number on our fighters.”
Zail frowned. Tragically, the giant space insects that had surprised their forces during the attack on the Republic had managed to claim the life of one of their pilots. However, it was the First Officer’s impression that the other TIEs sent to investigate had gotten away okay. “How so?”
“The Scree used a strange natural acid to eat into our ships,” The mechanic went on. “Even those fighters that did not have their hulls ripped open have had critical systems melted and warped. Worse, the housing for those systems are so twisted that we can’t get at the parts! It’s a pain to fix.”
As the other man spoke, Serpent turned to look around at the five TIEs on the hangar deck, and noticed the techs hard at work on them. Many were using laser-welders in their work, and the scale of the problem swiftly dawned on him. “You mean you have to realign the hulls before you can make repairs?”
Tenor nodded. “It’s taking hours of cutting and welding just to
remove the damaged systems, let alone repair and replace them. This is shipyard work, sir, we are hard pressed.”
Zail felt his heart sink. One TIE destroyed, and
five out of operation just because some over-sized bugs
spat on them! That was a quarter of their fighter complement. He needed to do something.
He thought of that comfortable bed in that lovely First Officer’s quarters of his, but pushed the mental image aside. “Okay, I have some experience fixing TIEs. Let me help.”
-----
Zail took a laser-welder and mask from a nearby droid, and then stripped out of his uniform top before proceeding. He joined a duo of techs hard at work on one the Interceptors of
Awe Squadron, and while they worked hard to fix a badly warped wing, the XO took a long hard look at the main engine.
It was barely recognisable. The outer hull looked more akin to frozen silver soup than titanium alloy, and Serpent had no idea what sort of damage was done underneath. Determined, he lifted the welder, lowered the mask over his eyes, and began to cut away at the damaged area.
It took the best part of an hour, and he wondered if, in some bizarre way, the Scree acid had strengthened that which it had reshaped. Finally, he peeled back the layers of melted metal and exposed the critical systems underneath. Zail had no idea how he would get the hull re-formed satisfactorily after he had so thoroughly ripped it apart, but he decided to deal with first things first. The engines needed repair.
He stared blankly. They were a mess.
The bugs’ acid had dripped down inside, obliterating microchips and melting clean through wiring. Zail marvelled at how fortunate the pilot was to have gotten his fighter home with the stuff eating away at his engines.
Serpent pulled out his datapad and called up an engine schematic for the TIE Interceptor. It took him a while, but he went through the damaged area with a careful eye, comparing what he saw on the actual system to what he
should be seeing. He built up a list of parts needed for the repair, and called over a deck hand.
“Here!” Said Zail, tossing the crewman his datapad. “Get to the stock room and bring me everything on this list.
Everything,” He emphasised, not wanting to waste time by having the man miss something and then having to send him again.
The other saluted quickly and ran off, leaving Serpent to stare at the ruined hull housing. The problem remained that, even if he fixed the engine, this TIE would be flying around with said system lying open and exposed. He needed to fix the hull plating itself, and his heart sank.
He turned to look over at the two men carefully welding the port wing back into position. It was laborious work, and they had to be careful to avoid damaging any of the solar energy collectors. Zail figured that he too could slowly weld the peeled-back hull into place, but it would also be a careful job. Worse, were the engines to develop problems in the future, the whole chunk of hull would again need to be ripped off rather than simply
opened. Tenor was right, this was shipyard work, and never intended to be carried out on board a capital ship.
Still killing time before the parts arrived, he turned his attention to other parts of the engine, just to be thorough. The P-s5.6 Twin Ion Engine (an upgrade to the P-s4 used by regular TIE Fighters) was a complex machine, but Serpent had studied it in length. He ran his eyes over the heat exchange matrix and energy accumulator lines. All seemed good.
And then he saw it! There was corrosion around the ionization reactor!
Zail frowned. It looked like the same sort of warping on the outer hull, but to far less of a degree. But how? While the Scree acid had managed to burn through into the engines, the damaged area was nowhere near the reactor. How could the two be related?
He leaned in close, and sniffed the corrosion. The acidic smell was strong, even a day after the attack, and he jerked his head back quickly. The scent was oddly fruity and reminded him of rancid lemons. Curious, Serpent investigated a piece of exposed hull plate that had been warped by Scree acid, and again recoiled. It was the exact same aroma. So the stuff
had travelled, in a reduced form, from one part of the engines to another. Strange.
Waving over Tenor, Serpent asked, “How fast did this acid work?”
The man shrugged his large shoulders. “Fast, but it persists for a while in a less virulent form. It was still eating into the TIEs when they landed,” Confirmed the tech. “That was how these Interceptors were landed but now cannot launch. Much of the serious damage was done
after their return, before we understood just how bad the acid was.”
Zail stared at the engines, suddenly understanding. “The systems on a TIE are not vacuum-sealed, are they?” He asked.
The other shook his head, confused and wondering what the XO was getting at.
“Well that means that once the TIEs returned to the hangar, the acid inside them was exposed to the oxygen atmosphere!” Said Serpent. “Don’t you get it? In here the acid could emit a gas as it melted the systems...”
“And that gas is also corrosive!” Said Tenor, catching on.
Zail nodded, and drew the man closer, pointing to the corrosion around the reactor. “See? The acidic gases from the breach have spread through the whole engine system, damaging far more than just what it landed on. Now, the damage is not as bad, but I think we need to have a
very thorough check of all systems adjacent to any that were affected, and clean them
thoroughly.”
Tenor understand completely, and ran off to have words with the crewmen working on the other TIEs. Serpent, meanwhile, accosted a tool kit for a sonic-cleaner, a tool used to scour dirt from systems, and took to the corroded areas. To his relief, he found the device adequate to the task, but the more he looked, the more affected areas he found, and cleaning them thoroughly was slow going.
He kept going, feeling fatigue tug at him, but he fought it off. In times like this, back on Phaeda, he turned to spice to keep him going, but he had shaken that habit since he joined the Vast Empire Navy. Or had he? There were times when he really wanted...
“I have what you wanted, sir!” Said a voice suddenly from behind him. Startled, Zail turned to see the deck hand from earlier, a container full of parts in his hands and a big smile upon his face.
The XO, glad of the distraction, ran his eyes over the contents. “Excellent work, crewman. Please, put it down there. Dismissed,” He said, and saw the man comply before hurrying off.
Refocusing on his task, and pushing the thoughts of spice from his mind, Serpent resumed cleaning.
-----
With a sigh be put down the sonic-cleaner, satisfied that the corrosion in the rest of the engine had finally been taken care of. Now, Zail just needed to rebuild the main drive itself.
With hydrospanner in hand, he attached wires, installed chips and circuit boards. In many ways it was like a giant jigsaw puzzle, and the XO could not help but find a childish joy in completing the puzzle. Like everything else had had to do on the TIE, it was slow going. Smart and well read as he was, he was far from being able to rebuild a Twin Ion Engine from memory, and had to keep consulting engineering schematics.
Finally, with deliberate slowness, he clicked the final circuit panel into place and secured it in place with a precision fusion-welder. “That should be it,” He announced to a nearby tech. “Hop into the cockpit and try firing the engine up!”
The woman complied, and in a few moments the TIE began to hum to life as it ran through the start-up routine. Zail smiled, proud of himself, and then shouted for the tech to cease and shut the fighter back down.
It was then that he noticed Tenor approach. “Nicely done, sir,” Said the chief mechanic.
“Thanks,” Said Serpent, “But I still have to weld those hull plates back into place,” He added wearily.
Fortunately, the other man was ahead of him. “My boys will take care of that,” The tech assured him, gesturing to the two men who had now finished their work on the port wing. “More importantly, we are now cleaning the corrosion off a lot of TIE systems that we otherwise would have missed. All five of these Interceptors will soon be combat ready, if not factory-fresh looking.”
“I’ll relay that to the Captain,” Said Zail, stifling a yawn. “Now, if you will excuse me,” He said, and departed the hangar bay, collecting his uniform jacket as he went.
Eventually he reached his room, and was about to head for bed, when his eye caught a look at the chronometer on the wall.
His next shift was in just twenty minutes.
Serpent cursed, and headed for the shower. It was going to be a long day...
- OOC:
- 2105 words. I decided to set this one during The Vast Empire Strikes Back story. Not that this is intended to be part of that story, or adds to it in any way, I just liked the idea of fixing a TIE that had been chewed on by a giant bug, and the opening half of that story provided my character the perfect chance to do that! Also threw in a comment about my character’s old spice addiction, as I haven’t mentioned it for a while and I want to keep it ticking over in the background (until it comes back with a vengeance at a later date...)
