(Pull and Park scrapyard)
Einarr pulled up to the front gate of the scrapyard in a battered old A-A5 speeder truck he had rented from a company just off the base. He pulled the truck through the gate and into a parking slot beside the main building before climbing out of the truck. His demicloak traded for a long gray trench-coat with the Jexxel insignia emblazoned across his back covered his armor, hardware, and the heavy belt around his waist as he moved to the front off. Entering the office he hit the switch for a signal buzzer on the front counter and waited as the owner entered from a back room, the thin wookie smiled upon spotting Einarr then he churred a greeting and extended his hand for a formal shake. Einarr returned the courtesy with the translator program Cassius had downloaded from the VE files, the speaker built into his chest plate taking up the dialog as Cassius displayed a text translation over his right field of vision.
“Greetings friend, I trust you are the one I spoke to on the holo?” Einarr nodded at the wookies question.
“Yes sir, I heard you had a old Heavy STAAP for sale with a bit of repair needed? Any chance you might be able to give me a decent garage spot and pick of the yard for parts? After all I am paying almost full price.”
“You are trying to break me friend, but there is wisdom in your words. Add a quarter percent to the price and I will provide the parts and a grav lift to move em with. The garage spot… hmm I think we can arrange it but how long would you need it for?”
“Well I would like to see the vehicle in question so I know how much it will take to repair. I have a small crew of pit droids and some help in the truck. Care to lead on so we can see the beast in the flesh?” The wookie nodded good naturedly and as they exited the shop Einarr signaled the passenger in the truck. Akito, Sunder, and a Le series repair droid exited the cab as before Akito lowered the rear ramp on the truck. A BLX labor droid and 5 pit droids slowly climbed out of the rear of the truck and took up position along the side to wait. Einarr signaled the former group to follow him and the wookie as they headed into the yard. Repaired speeders, trucks and skiffs stood in rows as the party passed them slowly quickly giving way to rows and stacks of vehicles of varying sizes in various states of repair. The group came to a stop before a battered hulk of armor, the plated wings extending off the nose of the vehicle bent at an odd angle and rusted. The standard seat and control arrangement had been replaced with an enclosed cockpit, the domed compartment the only area still bearing paint and the battered emblem of Cerberus prototype division. Akito shook her head sadly as she looked from the damaged vehicle to Einarr then back at the wreck.
Einarr smiled as he remembered the file he had acquired on the Cerberus division. “Done, I’ll take it. 1 maybe 2 standard weeks max for the garage work?” The wookie smiled and laughed, then agreed with a nod.
“If you think you can get it done in so little time, I will throw in the garage space.” Einarr nodded his thanks before sending a signal to the BLX droid by the truck to bring the pit droids over with the vehicle. The wookie moved off to start his own droids in acquiring the parts as promised as Einarr and his group started loading the battered vehicle onto the truck. “Sunder, you want to drive the truck to the garage while me and Akito search for anything worth salvaging for it?” The Mon cal nodded to Einarr as she shot an odd glance at the human marine engineer, then she turned and headed for the cab of the truck as the droids finished sliding the Heavy Staap into the cargo hold and latching it shut.
As the repulsor truck sped off with its new cargo Einarr turned to Akito as she pulled out a datapad and extended a lead in Einarr's direction. He took it and nodded as he plugged it into the socket behind his right eye. “Got the list and their mag levels?”
Akito nodded, and with a quick set of commands linked into his right eyes optics. Einarr engaged his ancillary vision modes and began tracing the path of his vision back and forth across the scrap piles ahead of him. 4 magnetic resonance signals pinged back along the proper levels, they moved to a new position and scanned again, one more time provided a rough triangulation of the desired parts. Akito sent the co-ordinates of 2 of the items to Einarr as she disconnected the cable and started off after her two parts pulling a fusion cutter and a fast-turn-3 hydro-spanner out of belt loops. Einarr turned and pulled his own hydro-spanner out of a side pouch as he started towards the first of his parts.
Rounding a pile of crushed and rusting land speeders Einarr found the pile containing his first part. Moving the forward nacelle of a speeder bike he found the main control board for a repulsor tank still attached to the main control panel. Einarr marked it on his inner relay HUD for droid pickup as he began disassembling it, the hydro-spanner latching onto and removing the 8 main bolts holding the casing in place to the frame of the console. He then switched settings on the hydro-spanner and adjusting the angle of the head on its hinge he removed the bolts on the faceplate. Einarr replaced the hydro-spanner into its pouch and drew a fusion cutter from its lanyard on his belt to burn off the rusted latches holding the last of the connections to the frame of the console. The console dropped to the gravel of the lot and Einarr pulled the dangling end of the data cord from behind his right eye as he opened the cover panel and slid the cord into a slot on the board. He then removed his hydro-spanner from the belt pouch again before extending the data port from the hilt, he plugged the tool into the board providing power as Cassius ran a diagnostic.
'Confirmation: This is the one we need sir.' Einarr nodded and looked under the cover panel to reveal another Cerberus division emblem. He withdrew his cord and disconnected the tool from the ports then replaced the cover panel, the work of a moment as he screwed the bolts back into place to secure it. Cassius added a digital beacon to the Control boards casing as the LE series walked up in quiet whirr of servo's flexing. The droid silently bent and picked up the part then trundled off towards the garage. Einarr moved off to his next target his eyes sweeping the piles of rusted or damaged vehicles and parts for anything usable, he tagged a stack of armor plating then a pair of laser cannons on a lopsided AST-5's chassis, one barrel bent at an odd angle, the other appearing to be missing the focusing lens and power cables.
Marking another stack of armor plates he passed to the co-ordinates of his 2nd part he paused to examine them for a moment. He knelt and using the fusion cutter sliced off a pair of latches holding a compartment closed on what appeared to be an old TIE fighter's rear cockpit section. Sticking his head inside he found a fair amount of the wiring and boards were still there and in decent condition with the exception of a badly burned sensor board, and the thermostat support control board. Einarr opened a discarded bin and loaded the good sections into it after some quick work with his hydro-spanner, then pulled himself clear, slid the box into one of his hip pouches, and continued on his way.
Einarr rounded the final corner of the path to his co-ordinates with the sound of sliding gravel echoing in his ears. The wreck of another Heavy STAAP rested on blocks of duracrete, the rear section from riders seat to repulsor node on the tail plate was shredded and mangled metal. Einarr approached slowly as he began plotting out the best spots to make the cuts to separate the nose with its main repulsor engine and drive fans from the mangled rear. As he approached he noticed that the pair of stubby rudder wings on the nose of the craft were in relatively good condition.
“Cassius, co-ordinate with the droids. I want the front of this craft salvaged complete with engine. Salvage any extra boards we can as well.” Einarr swapped to the fusion cutter once more as he began working on the twisted armor plates and bindings linking the wrecked to the good as he awaited the droids. Cassius drew a line with digital beacons over the right side of his field of vision as Einarr slowly brought the fusion cutter across the line in a slow crawl across the breadth of the vehicle. The droids arrived and began disassembling the remaining plates on the scrapped side sorting good for bad in dual piles, then preparing the forward section for transport as Einarr completed the final series of cuts. The front and rear sections separated with a crash of loos parts, armor plates and durasteel frame scraping off each other as the sections separated. The droids quickly bundled the good section in a synthweave harness to transfer it over to the transport as Einarr started towards the garage on foot.
Einarr watched the surrounding piles as he made his way towards the garage, piles of droid parts and the rusted hulks of vehicles as well as the occasional fragment of a fighter lined his path. The shapely form of a Mon calamari female stood outside the garage waiting for him and he raised his arm in greeting to Sunder as he approached. “Hows it look in there?” He asked as she fell into step with him as they headed for the door.
“Missing a lot of the boards, the engine has damage to 3 of the coils, and the armor forward of the tail section is pretty well chewed up. The only real salvageable sections are the cockpit, tail, and about 4 of the 8 coils. I am not sure what this thing ran into but whatever it was its pretty well wasted.” Sunder seemed distressed at the scope of the list she was reading off. Einarr just smiled and shook his head as he made his way past the tool racks and the data station to stand beside the wreck.
“Yet we will make it live again.” Einarr popped the hatch on the cockpit and climbed the steps built into the side of the armor. Swinging his legs inside he dropped into the seat built low into the body of the armor surrounding it and reached forward to grab the control yoke as his free hand reached for the ignition sequence. He brought the crafts damaged engine up slowly into a diagnostic mode surprised it started at all, only a quarter of the screens inside the cockpit lit up. Einarr read off the information on the displays then shut the engine down once more. Everything checked out with what Sunder had said so he began detaching the nonfunctional screens with his hydro-spanner, the little tool whirring away happily as it locked onto then removed each bolt and screw from the screen's mounting. As he popped the first one free he turned to the ladder side of the cockpit to find Sunder standing there watching him.
“Want to pass these down? I don't think we will need half the screens in here when all is said and done, so might as well get rid of the damaged ones now.” Sunder nodded and took the screen from his hands allowing him to return to work on the next one. 3 more times left the large functional main screen set low just below the ledge of the domed windscreen, as well as 2 smaller screens set to either side, one above the throttle on the right, the other above the engine controls on the left. He reattached the wires and leads to the screens, then pulled the box from his side pouch containing the control boards he had scavenged. He pulled a lever at the base of the main screen and a section of the console lifted up and to the right exposing a mess of boards, circuits, and wiring. Einarr leaned forward and began swapping the burnt remains of the boards in need of replacement for those in the case. The small extendable razor knife on the hydro-spanner was used to slip the connections out of the old boards to hang limp inside the casing, then a quick snap as the boards pulled loose from their securement. Einarr examined the burnt out boards, multifaceted crystals bound by circuits and solder to a plasticized board of molycircuitry. He slid the hydro-spanner into a loop on his belt as he drew a short combat knife and pried the good crystals loose from the board before tossing the remains up to Sunder to be scrapped. He repeated this process with the Nav control board, the communications control board, and the fire control board. Then he pulled a mono-filament camera on a flex cord which hooked into data port behind his right eye and flexed it in to examine the limply hanging connections. Cassius pulled up the schematics and displayed it over his right field of vision labels syncing to cords and boards as Einarr drew a soldering tool and pair of long handled tweezers from his tool pouch and carefully began reconnecting the wires. Holding one long red insulated wire with the tweezers to the board, he brought the soldering tool forward and with a gentle squeeze of the trigger released a micro-unit of hot mono-filament compound to secure it to the board. He repeated this process 36 times to get all the wires reattached to the boards, then withdrew his tools, closed the case, and moved the screen back into place.
“Stand clear lass” he called over the lip of the cockpit as he reached for the engine controls.
“Clear” the voices of Akito and Sunder replied in unison as Einarr's fingers danced over the controls. The computer came to life with a low frequency hum of released energy as the small generator plugged into the engine supplied power, Einarr ran through the list of disabled nodes, coils, and the grav chambers on the repulsorlift engine itself disabling the damaged coils, the faulty nodes, and locking out the punctured chamber. He then slowly fed energy into first the 2 good chambers in the 3 chamber engine, which fed energy down to the nodes, then the mini-coils. The customized Heavy STAAP slowly rose into the air as the engine bounced the antigrav energy off the magnetic force-field being generated below it. It climbed to a height of 4 foot before Einarr locked it in and sliding up to look over the edge of the cockpit at the pair of females standing by the door called “OK put the blocks in place. Lets get the underside and engine done first.” The women began directing the droids to wrestle the jack stands into place at the 6 support spots on the frame of the vehicle. As the stands were raised to support the weight Einarr slowly began reducing the field strength causing the mass of the vehicle to lower and rest onto the durasteel jack stands. As the stands took up the weight Einarr began the shutdown procedures before initiating a full drain to empty the residual charge in the coils, nodes, and chambers to allow them to be safely worked on. As a final measure he locked out the controls so nothing could cause it to restart randomly while he or one of his friends was trapped underneath it.
The lock out complete Einarr climbed free of the vehicle's cockpit then down the steps built into the armor. Akito had already slid under the frame of the vehicle while Sunder stood off by the door discussing something with the repair droid. Einarr dropped to the deck with his knee's slightly bent to cushion the landing then turned and crouched to look under the vehicle where Akito had already begun taking apart the faulty coil packs. Einarr slid in and with his back to here pulled his hydro-spanner from its slot and began removing the plating covering the main node interface. 4 bolts and a pair of straps later he was pulling the plate free to reveal the nodes underneath. The burned husks of 2 of the nodes met his investigation, he brought out his hydro-spanner again and locking it onto the core of the node he unwound the coiled metal wrapped around the capacitor crystal allowing the burnt out crystal to drop into his open hand. He set the scrap off to the side and pulled out a wire brush attachment to hook into the hydro-spanner before reaching up into the void left by the metal and crystal to polish the charred residue off the connections. This done he swapped the brush out and tilted the head to remove the inner layer of shielding and gain access to the wires inside. He extended the monofilament eye into the hole and examined the connections close up, the connections inside were slightly charred so Einarr stuck the spanner back in its loop and pulled free a pair of wire cutters. Sliding his left hand inside he snipped the connections one at a time, brought them out and, after cleaning off the tip and the insulation he retrieved a new connection tip from his side pouch and crimped it into place. Swapping the cutters for the spanner again he reached back up inside and disconnected the old connectors from their slots, then brought the fresh ones up and into the appropriate slots.
With the inner workings of the nodes repaired he ducked back out from under the vehicle under repair and moved to the heavy STAAP wreck resting outside on its side. He removed the plate covering the node interface on the wreck and set bolts and straps to the side along the plate, then he began the process of retrieving the crystal and metal coil from the node cylinder. With the new parts in hand he returned to the vehicle and pulled a small expanding clamp from his belt pouch before sliding the crystal into place. He then locked it in with the clamp and began feeding the coil in around it to secure and insulate until he felt it slide and lock into place at the tap side of the cylinder. He then removed the clamp and moved to repeat the process on the next one. As he completed the 3rd and final node repair the sun had reached the low point on the horizon and Sunder had headed back to base to report in for fire duty.
“Akito, you good to work for a bit longer?” Einarr asked as he looked over at the female Marine engineer.
“Yeah, I am on a 3 day pass. We are actually making pretty good progress here. Want to finish these last two while I get to work on the chamber?”
“I'd like to see how you plan to repair the chamber if you don't mind. How about I take 1 coil you do the other?”
Akito nodded as she closed the hatch on the coil pack she had just finished repairs on. Einarr lifted the plate back into place on the nodes and strapped then bolted it back into place then moved over to join her. The term coil was a bit misleading, the coil packs were actually bundles or clusters of mini-coils each containing a gravitic 'knot' in an arrayed formation. These 'coils' deployed an energy that was bounced off a magnetically generated forcefield which interacted with the gravity of the planet to create an air ride effect similar to a hovercraft. Einarr could see on close examination the damage done to this coil was going to need extensive repair if not wholesale replacement. Several of the mini-coils had broken open, their energy released, and would be unable to be repaired even with the best weld or patch job. He would need to swap it for new or salvaged.
“The coil packs on the damaged one look usable?” Akito nodded.
“Most of the damage to that one was structural. If the frame wasn't bent in 3 spots and the rear section and controls were not so much scrap, it would have worked better for you than this one.”
Einarr laughed “But that one lacked character.”
Akito shook her head and laughed as Einarr turned back to his work with hydro-spanner in hand. Removing the bolts from the base plate, he gripped the lower section in one hand as he lowered it slowly. The coil pack array trailed a spray of cables out of the hull as Einarr brought it down slowly to rest on the ground between his feet. He gripped the base plate with his knees and began disconnecting the wires from their connections inside the array. With the last wire pulled loose from its connection he carried the coil pack to the scrap pile and set it down beside the others Akito had already pulled. Then he returned to the busted hulk outside the door and began stripping out the last two coil packs setting one to the side for Akito who picked it up and returned to work. Einarr carried the part back inside and began reconnecting the color coded wires to their proper connections. Akito finished her repair before Einarr did so she came over to hold the array in place as Einarr drove the 8 bolts home into their slots in the base plate.
“Looks good” Akito said as she wiped sweat off her brow. Einarr nodded and checked his internal chronometer.
“About time to call it a night. We can get the chamber replaced in the morning.”
Akito nodded as they started for the truck to return to base. “Good idea, I want to pick up some more sealant from the shop before we do that as well.”
Einarr climbed into the drivers seat as Akito took the passenger and with a quiet rumble as the engine fired up, he added power to the field and in a spray of dust and gravel they headed for base.
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OOC: 3836 words. First post for the certification, more incoming.
FM/PO2/Einarr "Norsedragoon" Ghylthir/unassigned/S:46 Jexxel/W:101 Blade/ISD Adjudicator /TF:A/2Flt/FC/VEN/VE
[MC2] [SoA]
