Private Blistering Heat

[Gatz Derrevar]

Of all the planets for The Red Night's life support systems to die on, Tatooine had to be the worst. It was supposed to be a simple delivery: smuggle a few crates of spice past Enclave authorities, and discretely pass them off to the buyer at Anchorhead's spaceport. And to be fair, that part had gone over just fine. The narcotics had been picked up an hour ago, and were well on their way to be distrubuted to whomever it was that sold drugs on this armpit of a planet. By now, Gatz and Tilly should have been bound for Nar Shaddaa, far from this sandy disaster of a planet.

But it was hard to survive in space when your ship could no longer supply oxygen. Or regulate its internal temperature.

So that was how Gatz found himself in the position he was in now: wearing nothing but a pair of light canvas shoes and shorts, sitting in the cockpit, and sweating profusely as the twin suns baked him in the hull of his own ship. He'd ordered parts to fix it on the comm, while he put Tilly to work trying to jury-rig at least the air conditioning into working, but so far they hadn't arrived. How long did it take for a local delivery of parts? They couldn't have been very far from any junk dealers, or secondhand parts salesmen.

Frustrated, and feeling like he was about to melt into the metal deck of his VCX-100, Gatz stood to leave the cockpit and find Tilly.

"Hey Tills," the nickname was accidental, more of a slurring of his words due to heat exhaustion, "have you died from heatstroke yet? Or are you still working down there?"

Snark aside, it was a distinct possibility that she might have collapsed down there. He felt about ready to fall over himself.

---

Tilly

 

[Tilly]

She was grumbling as she worked, the hot from this planet was making her sweat more than she was use to. Having pulled off her jacket she wrapped it around her waist. In a half undershirt and cargo pants, and bent in a weird position as she worked on the ship. Hoping to least get some cooling into the ship.

“A simple job and then off we go. Why did you have to break down on this damn inferno,” Tilly exclaimed to the ship as though it would answer her.

Thankfully she had just gotten a new haircut and the little hair on top of her head wasn’t smothering her. Using the force she brought different tools up to her. Grease now looking like stains on her hands as she worked. Hearing Gatz speak she paused for a moment after the nickname but just shrugged it off.

“Im still alive. How are you my friend,” she called out before hearing a click from a part of the ship and suddenly hearing an air flow. “HA! YES WE SHOULD HAVE AC NOW!”

 

[Gatz Derrevar]

Well, Tilly was alive.

She was where he'd left her: putting his ship back together for him, and leveraging her strength in the Force to assist her with that task. Watching the Nightsister pull tools to herself with telekinesis reminded Gatz of his earliest days in the temple, learning about the subtleties and intricacies of the Force. He longed for the simplicity of those days sometimes. But that time had passed.

"Not dead yet," was Gatz's simple response to the pale mechanic.

He was still waiting to hear the chime of his comm link. Even if Tilly could fix the air, that was still just a symptom of a much larger problem. Until they got the parts they needed, they were stuck on this rock. Gatz didn't particularly care for Tatooine, and he was willing to be that Tilly wasn't either. Any planet that made them suffer through something like this wasn't worth being on.

There was a clicking noise from within his ship, and Gatz suddenly felt the a slight breeze of cool air. The A/C had kicked on. It seemed as though Tilly was worth what he paid her after all. Not that he'd doubted that, but it was nice to have definitive proof of her capabilities. She could certainly fix his ship better than he could.

With a groan Gatz lowered himself to the floor, and just sat. He kicked off his canvas shoes, and simply tried to enjoy the slight airflow of the now working A/C.

"Good job," he nodded at the Dathomiri witch, before groaning again, "you should kick off your boots before you get heatstroke though."

Was she even wearing boots? He didn't know. He genuinely did not have the energy to look over and find out. He just wanted to close his eyes and nod off.