Post by Charlotte on Sept 19, 2018 10:21:55 GMT -5
After leaving Jeryndi Trander's apartment that evening, Sadhric followed some glowdrifters into Keldabe.
KELDABE, MANDALORE
You try to be something you’re not.
Bare-handed, Sadhric wrenched the main repulsor housing side to side, filling the long hangar end to end with the crunched bark of metal on metal. He’d disabled all the mags; the only thing holding the old housing in was the quality of its original fit and time. In part due to the sheer age of it, but more due to the all-around lack of basic upkeep he’d discovered around the hangar, he hadn’t trusted the round-edged speeder’s auxiliaries to hold it above him on their own, so the dinged and dented once-blue ship was in the clamp, a meter above the floor just now.
Being something else isn’t going to bring any of them back.
The housing stopped resisting and he was finally able to slide it out, taking its weight carefully, carrying it to the workbench on the far side of the clamp’s controls. He had to hunt for the right tools to dismantle it, but he had a feel for the order hidden in the disorder and some quick poking around paid off.
After a few minutes, he had the thing broken down, neatly laid out across the bench, and fired up the hangar’s sorry excuse for a welder. It was so ancient it used heat to do its work, but he could see why it was there. It probably used a tenth of the power a better version would. —Or it would have been that efficient, if it had been working correctly. It produced its pink laser for him, but he didn’t like the breadth and spent another half an hour cleaning and calibrating the welder before getting back to the repulsor housing.
Being something else isn’t going to help anything. Be what you are.
But that didn’t solve anything, either, did it?
Sadhric had to flick off the welder before he threw it and just focus for a moment, staring hard at the parts arrayed before him.
It wasn’t a binary. Of course it wasn’t. It only felt like it sometimes. Being true to his nature, or playing nice. That’s what he’d been trying to do: play nice. It was important that he take a gentle hand here, but the key was not the gentleness. It was the principled restraint.
Principled.
The Mechanic turned the welder back on and reshaped the crown of the housing so that he could fit it to the new vents he was going to make for it.
You’re trying to be comfortable with being ready to take hits.
Behind him was the speeder in the clamp. Behind that was a blockier green-striped speeder that had ghosts of old Mando’ade symbols of some kind peeking out from underneath the peeling topcoat. It was all old landspeeders in here; nothing bigger, and nothing that could sustain much altitude. The green-striped one had needed its forward array reblocked so that its power wasn’t just bleeding out through the vents as heat. On the far side of that one rested a dead, high-finned model that he’d resurrected. Beyond that:
another green (he’d fixed its thrust regulators)
a sleek-lined Temel (he’d enjoyed dredging up his knowledge of that long-defunct line, getting power to its dash be recreating its ancient board)
If you were any kind of warrior, you wouldn’t have to work so hard at that. But even those you know who are trained warriors are terrible at it. Darien, Solomon, Ava, and now Jeryndi. You couldn’t even get within a blastershot of the real meat of it with any of them.
The yellow past the Temel had required use of the clamp, too, and from underneath it Sadhric had carefully realigned its aft vents so that it wasn’t fighting its own forward thrust.
Well done. Learned so much. What a journey, and all that. And you come away with—what?
On the end was a dusty red Ero-7. Cosmetic damage from a collision. Sadhric couldn’t replace the sensors that had malfunctioned and allowed the crash, but he’d done what he could with them and banged out and then smoothed the worst of the dents before getting bored with that.
Past the Ero-7: three tall Mando’ade in civvies with the morning light from the doorway behind them. They shared height and build, but not species. One had a blaster in his hand, but it hung at his side.
“Don’t think he even knows we’re here,” one explained, not bothering to whisper.
You’re making yourself crazy.
“He looked right at me an hour ago,” another countered, shaking his head.
You don’t want to play politician. Sadhric went still, thinking, seeing two worlds: the one he stood in, the one with the workbench and the repulsor housing and the dust and the grime, and the one far, far away on the other side of a twist in space. Yes, this is important. But what would it hurt for you to let yourself have some fun?
“Who is that?” asked the third, the newcomer.
“Think that’s our ‘new Mand’alor’,” sneered the first, squinting again at the idea.
That changed things. The newcomer drew himself up and seemed to consume more space. “Gonna fuckin’ feed him my fist—”
The first man caught him by the arm. “Wait—let him fix the Classic first.”
On the other side of the galaxy, the silver ribbon of Origin went nova.
KELDABE, MANDALORE
You try to be something you’re not.
Bare-handed, Sadhric wrenched the main repulsor housing side to side, filling the long hangar end to end with the crunched bark of metal on metal. He’d disabled all the mags; the only thing holding the old housing in was the quality of its original fit and time. In part due to the sheer age of it, but more due to the all-around lack of basic upkeep he’d discovered around the hangar, he hadn’t trusted the round-edged speeder’s auxiliaries to hold it above him on their own, so the dinged and dented once-blue ship was in the clamp, a meter above the floor just now.
Being something else isn’t going to bring any of them back.
The housing stopped resisting and he was finally able to slide it out, taking its weight carefully, carrying it to the workbench on the far side of the clamp’s controls. He had to hunt for the right tools to dismantle it, but he had a feel for the order hidden in the disorder and some quick poking around paid off.
After a few minutes, he had the thing broken down, neatly laid out across the bench, and fired up the hangar’s sorry excuse for a welder. It was so ancient it used heat to do its work, but he could see why it was there. It probably used a tenth of the power a better version would. —Or it would have been that efficient, if it had been working correctly. It produced its pink laser for him, but he didn’t like the breadth and spent another half an hour cleaning and calibrating the welder before getting back to the repulsor housing.
Being something else isn’t going to help anything. Be what you are.
But that didn’t solve anything, either, did it?
Sadhric had to flick off the welder before he threw it and just focus for a moment, staring hard at the parts arrayed before him.
It wasn’t a binary. Of course it wasn’t. It only felt like it sometimes. Being true to his nature, or playing nice. That’s what he’d been trying to do: play nice. It was important that he take a gentle hand here, but the key was not the gentleness. It was the principled restraint.
Principled.
The Mechanic turned the welder back on and reshaped the crown of the housing so that he could fit it to the new vents he was going to make for it.
You’re trying to be comfortable with being ready to take hits.
Behind him was the speeder in the clamp. Behind that was a blockier green-striped speeder that had ghosts of old Mando’ade symbols of some kind peeking out from underneath the peeling topcoat. It was all old landspeeders in here; nothing bigger, and nothing that could sustain much altitude. The green-striped one had needed its forward array reblocked so that its power wasn’t just bleeding out through the vents as heat. On the far side of that one rested a dead, high-finned model that he’d resurrected. Beyond that:
another green (he’d fixed its thrust regulators)
a sleek-lined Temel (he’d enjoyed dredging up his knowledge of that long-defunct line, getting power to its dash be recreating its ancient board)
If you were any kind of warrior, you wouldn’t have to work so hard at that. But even those you know who are trained warriors are terrible at it. Darien, Solomon, Ava, and now Jeryndi. You couldn’t even get within a blastershot of the real meat of it with any of them.
The yellow past the Temel had required use of the clamp, too, and from underneath it Sadhric had carefully realigned its aft vents so that it wasn’t fighting its own forward thrust.
Well done. Learned so much. What a journey, and all that. And you come away with—what?
On the end was a dusty red Ero-7. Cosmetic damage from a collision. Sadhric couldn’t replace the sensors that had malfunctioned and allowed the crash, but he’d done what he could with them and banged out and then smoothed the worst of the dents before getting bored with that.
Past the Ero-7: three tall Mando’ade in civvies with the morning light from the doorway behind them. They shared height and build, but not species. One had a blaster in his hand, but it hung at his side.
“Don’t think he even knows we’re here,” one explained, not bothering to whisper.
You’re making yourself crazy.
“He looked right at me an hour ago,” another countered, shaking his head.
You don’t want to play politician. Sadhric went still, thinking, seeing two worlds: the one he stood in, the one with the workbench and the repulsor housing and the dust and the grime, and the one far, far away on the other side of a twist in space. Yes, this is important. But what would it hurt for you to let yourself have some fun?
“Who is that?” asked the third, the newcomer.
“Think that’s our ‘new Mand’alor’,” sneered the first, squinting again at the idea.
That changed things. The newcomer drew himself up and seemed to consume more space. “Gonna fuckin’ feed him my fist—”
The first man caught him by the arm. “Wait—let him fix the Classic first.”
On the other side of the galaxy, the silver ribbon of Origin went nova.