trans_9 | Fix up, look sharp

Jaina was where Jaina always was when she felt listless. The hangar. Though, today she isn't working on x-wings. They may have been looking a bit ropey in their ripe old age, but they had always been a reliable design and today she finds their current batch in annoyingly good condition. Certainly nothing that required any major maintenance and she wasn't about to try overclocking them closer to XJ3 standards without clearance.

No, she would need a project. The Falcon was off limits, but there were still a fair few small freighters and transports collecting dust in the back of the hangar. She paced the deck a few times, looking for one that shouted out at her. The one she eventually plumped for is a small, sleek, ray-like star yacht. They were a relatively common sight in the Core Worlds, popularised chiefly by young and affluent thrill-seekers, much to the chagrin of the freight haulers they swept up on the space lanes.

It was perfect. Smugglers liked to use them so she knew it would not only be fast but easily modifiable. The Terriks' Pulsar Skate was supposedly of the same design, though you'd never know by looking at it. And although she wouldn't have nearly enough parts for it yet, the young mechanic could pretty much gut the thing and rebuild it from scratch, exactly how she wanted it. And of course the longer it took, the better.

An hour later she has a section of the hangar bay cornered off to work on it and half-sits, half-lays amid a pool of schematics, scribbling over the interior layouts. Scrap the passengers' quarters for quads here, bolster the shield projectors there...

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Jaina followed Ben's field of vision over her shoulder and turned to see the younger girl and her cornucopia of stripped parts, dead to the world as she peered at the Baudo's schematics.

She waved a hand across the girl's field of vision, just to check she hadn't died standing there or something and ventured, "Uh, hello?"

Whoa, Hello there hand! Chao nearly jumped and blinked at the people before throwing up a shy smile.

"Ah, didn't mean to intrude!" Chao quickly inserted, trying her best to feel a little more embarrassed then she actually was. "I was just...never thought I'd see people this far back of the hangar."

She didn't know them, so maybe playing as her old student self would keep things in good nature.

Ben glanced at Jaina and raised his eyebrows. What he was picking up in the Force wasn't entirely genuine, but neither did it seem malevolent. "What's wrong with the back of the hangar?" he asked the newcomer.

The corner of Jaina's mouth quirked slightly as she tucked the hyperdrive and defense layouts under the more domestic schematics. She was the Trickster Goddess and knew a thing or two about poker faces, but she didn't need instinct like that when she had the Force. This girl, whoever she was, had presence.

"This is where all the best gear is kept," she replied slowly, eyeing the girl's stash, "But I guess you've already got that figured out."

Chao caught Jaina hiding certain layouts from the Martian's vision, but took no comment to it. It was only reasonable that you would hide important details like that.

With the woman's comment to her stash, Chao glanced over at her pile of gear and let out an honest shy giggle. Her hand almost instinctively went up to scratch the back of her head. "I was pretty sure most of it was up for grabs. I didn't see any signs or notices of claim..."

Her brown eyes drifted back to the schematics, as her own techno-savvy mind was eager to read more. "..This is pretty impressive! Can I ask what kind of power plant you were thinking of putting in? The one it has now isn't going to work for what I see so far. Probably should add an auxiliary battery for shields in case of failure."

Ben shrugged. "Depends on the parts lying around the hangar, right? Unless you can cannibalize Stacy."

"And I'm not willing to get manhandled by tentacles to find out," Jaina added, chewing her pencil, "Honestly, I'm hoping something else back here has a Quadex core. Falcon's been flying on one of those since before I was born, but short of that I hope wherever Stacy takes us next has a junk industry."

"'Wherever Stacy takes us'?" he echoed, baffled. "I thought we were trapped in not-space because our home dimensions were gone."

Chao shook her head, turning to give a brief look at the boy. She knew a ton of her friends would be all over him if they were here. Good thing they weren't. "From what I understand of Stacy, we're occasionally pulled out of the bleed and into a new dimension to do whatever mission the ship wants us to do. The ship never stays there for long, but it should be long enough for some fresh air on occasion-ne."

She looked back at the schematics, contemplating like she were looking at a grand puzzle. "It might be a little awkward, but maybe you could replace it with two separate power plants from a couple strikecrafts and force them to run in-synch with each other. It would shave you a ton or two and bear less strain on either unit."

"What she said," though a pilot at heart, she still relished the opportunity to get her feet on dry land. Stacy was a far cry from the lush jungleland of Yavin IV or the sprawling cityscapes of Coruscant, "Some think that's the 'Grand Purpose' we've all been dragged out here for. To keep the universes that still exist from going the way ours did. If ours went anywhere at all, of course."

Sitting back in her pool of blueprints, Jaina huffs and ruffles her hair, "Getting the computer to work with dual cores is going to be a headache, especially if I outfit it with droid brains to optimise performance. But if I'm fitting extra shield generators I don't see another way with the parts I have to hand."

"I can help," Ben offered, leaning forward. "I've got the basics down from working on the Shadow, and you can teach me the rest while the parts go in." He grinned. "I'll even keep an eye out for spare parts between carrying out the ship's Super Amazing Grand Purpose."

"I know a thing or two about A.Is, there shouldn't be too much trouble with programming them properly if you're willing to hire me." She never really heard artificial intelligences as 'droid brains', but Chao guessed that was some common slang for this woman's world.

Since this wasn't her project, she didn't even bother to take notice to Ben's request, instead finding herself muttering calculations while fingering through the layout.

"Hey, I'm going to need a co-pilot aren't I?" Jaina gave Ben a grin. She had a lot of love for the Shadow herself. It was partly the reason she had picked out this particular yacht. All curves and very Aunt Mara, "My usual carpetman is otherwise engaged, hopefully snoozing in the pod caverns."

The assent to the new girl's offer came more reluctantly but it was perhaps better they kept an eye on her, especially considering the collection of parts she was carrying around with her, "Hire you? Hire would imply I have something to give in return."

"A co-pilot?" he echoed. "I thought you'd be flying one of the X-Wings."

Chao shrugged at Jaina and gave the young woman a light, but honest smile. "I think learning about your universe's technology is more than enough payment. The principles are similar, but everything has their own quirks and I'd like to learn more first-hand."

Fix up, look sharp

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