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INCIDENT REPORT 18-0305002
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At approximately 1600 hours, on the third day fifth month of this year, maintenance crewmen with the 118th Fighter Squadron were conducting pre flight checks prior to third shift patrol with Warrant Officer Karl Zeddrick supervising.

Senior Crewman Tei-Yehn, who was assigned to TIE/IN active designation 118C4, entered the cockpit in the starfighter launching tube. At that time, he began the power cycle for the craft and awaited clearance from the maintenance team via radio.

Leading Crewman Horrix Belveck observed the concussion missile in tube 2 of that starfighter to be reporting a maintenance error. LCR Belveck initiated the unloading procedure remotely from the maintenance station. At that time, LCR Belveck reports he lost contact with TIE/IN 118C4. At the same time, an audible explosion was heard in that section of the ship. He notified WO1 Zeddrick who requested a security team and fire response team to inspect the fighter tube. WO1 Zeddrick reports that contact with TIE/IN 118C4 or SCR Tei-Yehn were not regained.

Sergeant Gorge Mikel reports that, upon reaching the entry tube 4 where TIE/IN 118C4 was docked, a substantial chemical fire was shooting from the direction of the starfighter and making contact with the pilot impossible. SGT Mikel reports he then requested a medical to the area while the FRT extiguished the blaze. FRT then extracted the pilot, then unresponsive, who was taken to Medical via stretcher.

Surveillance video and radio recording was activated during this incident. WO1 Zeddrick has nothing further to report at this time.
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    Raigen could still feel the flames. Five years had passed since a poorly maintained, leaking concussion missile had filled its tube with tibana gas fuel aboard Raigen's TIE Interceptor. At least, that was what the after incident investigation had concluded. Some engineer had decided that, maybe, the tibana gas in the fuel cell of the missile had degraded in its tubing. That same engineer had supposed that, somehow, the degraded gas may have eaten away at the soft metal gaskets of the fuel cell. He or she had also decided that when TIE/IN 118C4 had been loaded with its armaments, that missile had shaken. Not much, but just enough for that gasket to crack. The gas slowly filled the launcher tube. Then, just before Raigen had left on a completely unneccessary patrol of unoccupied space, the missile decided to notify Maintenance that it was low on fuel. One spark later. . .

    Raigen could still feel the flames. He could still feel his hands, and although he wore leather gloves to prevent scratching whater equipment he was working on, he still thought he could feel the cold metal of the hydrospanner as he gripped it in his new hands. When his body had been dragged from the starfighter and rushed to the nearby Medical Bay, he had been pronounced dead by the attending physician. If not for some upstart surgeon doing his thesis on Cybernetic Replacement Surgery, Raigen would have been packed in a body bag and loaded into cryo storage to be spaced at some makeshift ceremony.

    His face had been saved from the third degree burns to the rest of his body only by his flight helmet, which Raigen had reinforced and sealed in the not unlikely chance his craft depressurized. His eyes, however, were not spaced the intense light and radiation from the blast, and were replaced with bioengeneered orbs with micoprocessor controlled lenses. On the bright side, to excuse the turn of phrase, he no longer needed a lamp to work in the dark crawlspaces and repair hatches.

    "Alright, cycle auxillary power to the system and lets get another readout." Raigen ordered as he stuck the spanner out of the hatch for a waiting crewman to retrieve.

    "Same error. Says the hyperdrive is overheating." A warrant officer stated as he read from a datapad connected to a comport on the side of the shuttle.

    "Then it isn't the sensor. Overide the code and have a droid reprogram the Nav Computer. Should be good from there."

    "Isn't it possible the hyperdrive is bad?" The WO1 asked.

    "No chance. She shouldn't be getting enough power to overheat. The control module on the Nav Computer is faulty, needs to be reprogrammed."

    "We're going to miss you down here. You know ship efficiency has been up twenty percent since you transferred to our division?" Raigen had done six months in intensive care after the accident, another six of physical therapy. Even then, it took a personal order from Admiral Stormz to allow him to remain on active duty, although no longer in a combat cappacity. Hed been transferred to engineering and mostly maintained the Dead Gun's hyperdrive and sublight engines for three years. He needed something more challenging, and the old Lamba shuttles broke down so much he neved needed for work. But now that was over.

"I'm getting a caf. You coming Zeek?" The warrant officer, Xell Zeedrick, shared quarters with Raigen in the fore section of the ship.

"Sure thing, let me grab my comlink." Zeek, as he was known, grabbed his white cylinder shaped comlink from a nearby hovercart which served as their toolbox and mobile shelf. "Jaynine! start reprograming that Nav! we'll finish up after lunch."

    Zeek was tall for a maintenance worker, nearly 1.9 meters, which made it difficult for him to climb around in the cramped engine compartments and crawl spaces of the shuttles. Raigen wasn't much shorter, but his duramesh coated body was all but immune to scrapes, scratches, and mild burns as he pulled himself out of the inspection hatch. Raigen pulled off the oil covered black overalls. His gray battle dress pants were crease free, a benefit of the material, and his black tank top revealed the cold gray skin replacement that covered him from the neck down.

Raigen and Zeek left the hanger, turning fore and past the Officer's Club and Pilot's quarters. Raigen had been offered to keep his bunk. He could barely look in the direction of them now. He did anyway, knowing it may be the last time he saw the inside of the ship.

Raigen left Kaythree and the loader droid to finish welding the hullplates onto the new engines. A tedious process, each of the durasteel plates needed to be friction welded to each other via a special attachment on the loader droids arms. The rapidly rotating attachment head would apply enough pressure and heat to the material that it would bond both the surface molecules and those beneath, creating a bond that would withstand the immense forces of atmospheric reentry.

    Raigen's maintenance hanger connected to the rest of what would have been considered a shipping and receiving area in the spaceports original layout by way of large corridors with scattered bulk elevators and storage bays. In fact, on most days, Raigen would have been happy to have utilized a loader skiff to traverse the quarter mile or so to the "spine" of Last Hope, had there been a functional one available. Instead, he beat feet past the shuttered bays, some with their emergency air lock doors engaged, indicating a structural failure on the exterior. There was little traffic in this area as most of the old makeshift businesses that inhabited this area of the station had made off for new worlds within the decades following the formation of the New Republic.

    The spine, essentially a central pipeline leading from the polar north of the station housing the administravive and residential sectors and leading down through the industrial levels and into the old mines, terminated at the polar south of the asteroid in a network of docking points, cargo bays, and hangers.  Conduits, pipes, and elevator shafts for both personnel and cargo affixed themselves around the central tibanna pipe and it was one of the still working cargo shafts that Raigen boarded. Raigen swiped his resident badge over the control console and selected a level. Immediately, inertial dampners hummed to life as the platform rocketed upward at blistering speeds before coming to a stop. Raigen sighed and thanked the Maker as the stone in his gut failed to materialize, signaling a functional dampner unit. Had the unit failed, Raigen's insides would have shot through his head as the laws of physics enacted their cruel justice.