The Repair Deck - Tarancon Base, Omicron Minor

[Stoner_Steve]

Tarancon base sat on the literal edge of humanity. Beyond the edge of what even Zoners would dare travel. But just because the Zoners wouldn’t travel this far didn’t mean there wasn’t a credit or five to be made.

Rob had been on Tarancon very nearly since it had been slapped together and pressurized but most of his duties kept him confined to the repair portion of the flight deck and with working the night shift it meant he was usually assigned a lot of the general maintenance that the other two shifts wouldn’t pick up. But every now and again something special would come along that the other two shifts wouldn’t even get to see. These sorts of projects either required attention to detail, or careful consideration. Both of which were often in short supply on the rookie day shifts.

He paused in a darkened corner of the repair deck. A sealed container had just some of the needed supplies for this project he had ordered, now only if the fighter would arrive he could start to asses the damage.

[Cortana Clark]

Meanwhile Cortana and Verac packed everything up and are already heading towards Tarancon. Slightly nervous to meet the people of the junkers congress in person. They discussed the last few steps and security messurments. Verac one of the finest engineers when it comes to engines and Cortana a specialist when it comes to weapon and electrical engineer, truely a dreamteam some would say, but what will the junkers think?

A short while later they arrived in Omicron Minor. Both were prepared expecting the worst, but nothing really happened. The flight was quiet besides a few small nomad drones nothing really interesting was around. They soon saw Tarancon appearing on their scanners. Before they requested the docking permissions they started to talk about their last concerns. A bit later their docking permissions were garanted and they started the docking manouvers.

[Stoner_Steve]

Rob watched as the lift descended from the deck above. A ship, cleverly wrapped in a pretty blue tarp, sat in the middle of the lift attached to a hover-dolly. He raised his hand in a friendly greeting. His trademark brightly colored Hawaii shirt contrasted sharply on the rusty colored walls behind him.

"No need to hide things. There's only a handful of us on duty this time of night." Rob called out as he approached the platform. Entering the final location for the dolly and backing out of the way as it automatically pulled the fighter into the farthest corner of the bay. Large black tarps hung from ceiling acting as partitions. Which would allow them a measure of privacy, for whatever that was worth on this tiny station.

"Alrighty lets see what we're working with" he said to no one in particular while he set to work cutting away at the straps and blue tarp. No doubt interested in the actual condition of the craft. Pausing for a moment to wipe the sweat forming on his forehead he addressed the pair watching him, "So, what brings you two to the edge...its not often Tarancon gets a transmission of any kind, let alone one from the Arbiter." His eyes narrowed a bit "A man might wonder what you offered him for such attention."

[Cortana Clark]

Staying in the background while waiting for the man to unwrap the ship both Cortana and Verac were not sure what reaction to expect from the Junker. While Cortana was fully focused on the Junker, Verac took the chance to take a look at their surroundings. What he noticed worried him a bit as it seemed that the station is in a bit of a rough state with all the rusty walls surrounding them. Wondering why there was no formal greeting she was kinda surprised by the questions of the junker. While walking towards the Junker, Cortana started to speak in a slighty annoyed voice. "Well, first of all I'm Cortana and this is my chief Engineer Verac who works for me for quite sometime now. What us brings here? Well, Junkers are known for their good work on ships and you are more or less the only people who are willing to work with people like us. You will see what we brought to you once you finished the unwrapping."

Shortly after the Junker was able to tier the wrapping down and revealed was a standart class Wraith of the Rheindland Military. The excietment was fairly holding back as the condition of its hull was not really good. Some panels were missing and there were quite a lot of holes in it. As soon as the Junker was finished with the unwrapping and took a look at the Ship Verac stepped up. "Well, as you can asume this ship had a pretty rough time before we got our hands on it. In my opinion the hull needs to be exchanged but Cortana wanted to leave that up to you." Cortana noded. "I trust them enough to make a good job. They never let us down and I don't think they will do it now Verac. Anyway as I said in the communication, I will take care of the electronical stuff, Verac will take care of the engine and for you guys the number one priority would be the hull. If this is still okay of course... The first part would be to remove the hull as we have to gain access to the powercore and all the wires as this has to be exchanged."

Meanwhile, Verac was in a obvious hurry. When Cortana talked he grabbed his tool box and started to remove all the hull parts around the engine. He started to even remove some parts of the engine itself in a speed that even Cortana would not have expected and she was clearly confused by it.

[Stoner_Steve]

Rob observed Verac disassembling the engine. "Name's Rob" he wiped his nose on his sleeve. "There's only about a hundred of us at any one point on the station, only about 5 of us awake this late." he chuckled slightly "Hell I even had to go wake up the flight controller to make sure someone was there to let you in." he fell quiet for a moment, pacing around the fighter while Verac continued to work expediently. "We uh, don't bill by the hour, if you didn't know." he chuckled to himself mainly at the speed with which Verac was disassembling the vessel. "Well, I'll stay outta his way and do a lap, grab a cup of coffee from the cafeteria. Once he's out of my way we'll get a scan done of the hull and get a set of plans going for the forge."

He pulled out a hammer from the pocket of his overalls and tapped a few time here and there around the damaged sections of hull. "Yeah I reckon we can work with most of this."

[Cortana Clark]

"Well, Rob you need to know that Cortana will fly this ship and I just want to make sure that she is getting it as fast as possible. And the faster I'm done with striping down the engine the faster you and Cortana can start to work." Verac says in a hurry. "By the way did you get our delivery that Cortana ordered and how much will it cost us?"

Meanwhile Cortana turned around and walked towards the elevator. "Well, I will go and visit the cafeteria to get myself a beer and continue to work on the electrical schematics. Verac, I guess you have it under control?" Without even bothering to wait for his anwser she went to the cafeteria.

Once she grabbed her beer and sat down at a table in a dark corner she started to spread out some papers. "Alright, so this Junker called Rob seems to be a nice person, maybe he could use some more manners but that won't really matter if he gets the job done. What do you think Thraike?"

"Joy. Ours don't mind the darkling as long as he dosen't stand in the way of the Light. Those kind of Darklings have proven to be useful for our cause many times. Yet we hope that he can do the task fast as ours have no time to waste." Cortana was wondering why Thraike would not mind the Darkling as he normaly acts more or less agressive against them. "Well, Thraike that is rather unusal for you but okay. Anyway, Shall we continue to work on our part? We already drew the Powercore wiring and the energy storage wiring. Now we need to draw the cockpit/mainboard wiring and the light and lifesupport as well as all the engine stuff and weapon hardpoints."

Laying on the table you can see the schematics of the Powercore and energy storage systems.

Powercore wiring


Energy Storage

[Stoner_Steve]

Rob watched Cortana leave via the service elevator on the edge of the deck before walking up behind Verac as he continued to remove engine components. "We over-ordered just as a general rule" he pulled a small tablet out of his front left pocket. "Your portion is 5 million for the supplies to be delivered. We'll open a running tab for our services on the station, but a usual restoration job doesn't run more than 25-30 million." he pulled another tablet out and handed it to Verac "That will display your running tab and itemized invoice of work done." he put both his hands into his pockets again. "If you have any questions use that tablet to connect to me. Otherwise I'll be down in on deck 1 working on the waste reclamation system until your ready for me to start sorting out the hull."

Station Tab:

1x Special Delivery - 5,000,000 sc.
1x Liberty Ale - 4,000 sc.

Running Total: 5,004,000sc.

[Cortana Clark]

"That sounds perfect. I also should be done with the dismounting in an hour or two. Maybe you want to take a quick look. I'm pretty sure that I will forget to message you. Verac was quite pleased that their materials already arrived. In the same time Cortana was scribbeling on her electro schematics.

AHHH..... Why has this stuff to be soo annoying.... I though as always, yeah just a quick sketch and that is it, but obviously it is not.... We managed to create the emergency Light system and the life support system. Cortana was slightly annoyed with herself.

Emergency Light system


Life support system


Well, a few done and a lot more to do... I should probably visit Verac sooner or later. Not that he starts to miss me. She says while almost falling asleep.

[Stoner_Steve]

Tarancon Base - Repair Deck -
3rd Shift - A Few Hours Later

Rob lumbered across the deck and up to the fighter hidden in the corner. Eyeing over the work so far he commented "Looking good so far, we'll get the forge rolling on some new internal braces, should only take a few hours to produce." He worked his way forward to Verac, who was up front in a tangled mess of wires in the cockpit. "I'm just eyeballing it at the moment but if I had to guess we'll need a whole new set of internal braces, along with your general patch work of the external armor" he reached into his overalls and pulled out his tablet, holding it out at arms length and lazily waving it about while pointed at the damaged hull sections. "Could you imagine that back in the day we used to do this with pen an' paper" he continued to wave the pad around, while also slowly circling the fighter.

Finally completing a full revolution of the fighter Rob held the tablet close to his face, he probably needed glasses. Examining the pad quietly for a few minutes while prodding it occasionally he finally exclaimed out-loud "Ohhh boy, yeah we'll need to get the fabricators going as well for this one." he returned the pad to his pocket. Now for the fun news, the first shift doesn't arrive to work for another hour or so, and its probably going to take them most of the day to get these parts sculpted." He held his watch up close to his face Look I don't know what a normal day is for you but it'll be 7 am in a bit and Rosie is making breakfast so if I was you I'd grab some grub and sleep it off, check back in tonight. By then the boys will have some materials for me to start the restoration.

[Cortana Clark]

Well, that seems like a good idea. We usualy don't sleep much, but I think it would be better while we wait that you dismantle the rest of the hull. If I'm honest we prefer to work with pen and paper since it is harder to steal such informations. Well, Rob I will leave to get a bit of sleep.

Verac dosen't seem to show much emotions while he walks towards the elevator and mumbles something.

I hope that they will have dismantled the hull by tomorrow so we can start with with all the wires and the engine.

Meanwhile Cortana is still drawing on the schematics. As she gets more and more tierd she starts to lose her focus and starts to speak with herself.

I need to get this done... Why was so stupid to replace all the wiring... Mainboard, cockpit and engines are done... only the hard points are....

While speaking to herself she falls asleep without even gathering the papers together..

Mainboard


Engine


Cockpit