“So…what seems to be the problem?”
Leaning against the guard rail of the maintenance bay catwalk, Xanatos 677 Bombassa looked to be in his element. His flight suit was already stained with grease and oil, and had more than a few burn marks to boot. His face was covered in grime, except for a ring around his storm-blue eyes. Even before he had joined up with the Vast Empire, Xanatos had grown up around Imperial spacecraft. Living on the Bestine IV Shipyard with his father, he’d gotten many a chance to tinker with the various frigates, corvettes and countless TIE Fighters that went through routine maintenance at the shipyard.
After all, his father had been a mechanic and engineer since before the Galactic Empire had even been formed. As he looked up at the TIE/In Interceptor with an expert eye, Xanatos noted no obvious damage on the outside, so whatever the problem was, it wasn’t battle damage. Still, the dataslate he was staring at reported that this fighter had gone through routine maintenance only a few weeks ago – it wasn’t due for a checkup for another week. Even without needing to be told, he already knew that some component somewhere must have malfunctioned – a rather rare occurrence in a TIE Series Fighter, famed for their low operating cost.
“The top-starboard laser cannon isn’t firing anymore. It draws power and the computer reads it as firing, but no actual laser is coming out of it.” Pendar scratched the top of his head, perplexed. He had taken the fighter out for what was supposed to be a very routine familiarisation exercise, but had been ordered to land after he reported a malfunction in the laser cannon. Xanatos, citing his experience with TIE’s and the fact he had undertaken the field mechanic course last year with Command School, had requested permission to take a look and see if he could figure out the problem without needing to get the pit crew involved.
His instructor had granted the request. Already, his mind was running through the possibilities, as Van, never far away from the two, was already marshalling a pair of Astromech droids into position.
“Cannon doesn’t look like it has any damage…it’s not a coolant problem or the whole thing would be slag. Might be a glitch with the fire control computer…” He spoke softly to himself as he stared down at the apparently malfunctioning cannon. It looked perfectly fine from where he was standing – there wasn’t even any carbon scoring from a misfire or an overheat!
He motioned for Pendar to take a step closer, and waved to Van to get his attention.
“Okay, we’re going to get that wing detached so we can take a closer look to it. The whole thing just pulls out when you disengage the locks. Let’s get started.”
He didn’t even realize that, as he took his friends through the steps required to remove the starboard wing from the TIE Interceptor’s superstructure, that he was teaching them about how the TIE/In was constructed – and yet, this was exactly what he was doing.
“So you’re telling me that you can just rip the whole wing off, slap another one into place, and it will work without any problems at all?” Van asked, incredulous. Having worked with modular but complex Corellian craft all his life, craft famed for what was optimistically called ‘quirkiness’, it made sense that he would find it hard to believe that what was normally a complex operation would be so easy.
“Exactly.” Xanatos replied, as the three of them, with the help of the two Astromech droids and a crane built into the ceiling of the bay, slowly lowered the now detached wing to the floor.
“They’re designed that way. We could just replace the whole wing if the damage was serious, and we’d be done within the hour. TIE’s might be fragile, but they’re also a hangar tech’s dream.”
Leaving his two comrades to their thoughts, Xanatos lightly stepped up onto one of the support struts that ran along the outside of the solar panel ‘wing’. Though they were durable, the solar radiator panels ran hot, and it was a bad idea to walk directly on them. He carefully walked over to where the cannon, now cut off from the generator, sat inert.
He cracked open the armoured casing, and took a look inside. The low-temperature laser tip had already cooled and didn’t appear to have any problems. He ran a gloved finger over it anyway, to see if he could feel any cracks that his eyes weren’t able to pick up. Nothing – but he hadn’t thought it would be the tip, anyway. A cracked tip would result in a spectacular backfire. The problem would be further back. He swept his gaze down the barrel of the laser, and quickly glanced at the power line. It looked as fine as the day it was laid out into place.
He crouched down to get a closer look at the cannon, his eyes moving from the barrel of the weapon. The coolant shrouds were intact, as were the radiators. The capacitor banks looked in good condition...
…It was when he spotted the laser power converter that he finally saw what the problem was. There was a thin, black line over the join between the power converter and the tube that connected it to the capacitor banks. He grabbed the tube with a gloved hand and gave it a light, experimental tug. Exactly as he’d thought! The tube came cleanly out, as did a few parts of broken composite metal. The lock that kept the tube connecting the capacitor banks, where power for the laser cannons was stored to the power converter, where it was changed from energy into a laser beam, was broken.
The capacitors would pull power from the main reactor, but without a solid connection to the converter, the power would stay there and do nothing. If Pendar hadn’t reported the problem immediately, the power would have built up and eventually overloaded the capacitors, with deadly results! Running his finger along the inside of the power converter’s tube socket, he felt bits of broken metal brush aside. Obviously, something had knocked it out of place. A minor issue, but the cannon was useless until it was fixed.
“Got it!” He declared triumphantly. “We’ve got a bad laser power converter.”
Fortunately, the Cappadocious kept spares for all of the basic TIE parts nearby, and it would only be a matter of minutes before a fresh one was brought up. After that, it was a simple procedure to swap the two out, reconnect the tube, and the cannon would be ready to fire in less than an hour.
He tapped the comm-pad strapped to his wrist, contacting his instructor.
“Sir, I found the problem. It’s a bad laser power converter. I’ll get it replaced, and your TIE should be ready to fly again in 40 minutes.”
He felt more than a little pleased that he had been able to help out. If he hadn’t taken the time to check the problem himself, a perfectly good wing might have been scrapped.
- OOC:
- WC: 1,195 Words
Xanatos takes a look at a TIE Interceptor with a malfunctioning laser cannon. Isolating the wing that has the cannon mounted, he takes it apart and locates the source of the problem, also running over in his mind how the TIE Cannon works: Power goes from the reactor to the capacitor banks, which is then fed through a cable to the Laser Power Converter, where the energy is heated and converted into a laser beam, which is then directed down the cooled barrel, fed through a power tip ‘lens’ and fired at lightspeed. The ‘bolt’ we see is nothing more than the trail of the actual invisible laser, much like the tail of a comet. Without a good converter, the weapon won’t fire.
