Coils and Curriculum

[Adder]

There wasn’t a single feature visible of the pilot save for her legs, sticking from under the engine block like a forgotten corpse. It was after hours at Kali-U, and the halls were mostly abandoned this time of day – no telling what kind of weird parties the local fraternities got up to.

Still, the occasional wiggle or curse echoing through the back of the shop would reassure any passing observer that the owner of the limbs was, in fact, alive.

The back of her head hit the floor with a grunt. Green eyes squeezed closed as she wiped a stain from her forehead. Most days she loved poking ‘round these, but hell if this specialized model wasn’t as clammed-up as a Hapani princess.

Adder glanced at her datalogger. After a few failed voice commands, the screen finally changed to show [member="Kurt Meyer"]’s classes.

Should’ve been done by now, right? Her brow furrowed. Well… it was their first day.

With a sigh, she picked up her hydrospanner back up again and dove back in. He’d show up. Eventually.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

He really didn't like school.

It was starting to get to him a little bit, though he couldn't admit it quite yet. There was something about this, something about being surrounded by dozens and dozens of people that were smarter than him...it was grating, pressing.

Kurt had never really thought that he would have much of an issue with it. In truth he'd thought pretty much like anything else the pressure of academia would roll off of his back, but that wasn't exactly true. Everything was closing in one him. It felt as though his failure was becoming more assured, as though he couldn't press through. His lips thinned as he opened the door, his eyes wandering across the room as he tried to find where Adder was.

At least this project took his mind off things.

Books were all well and good, homework was all well and good, but this was something he could actually do. Sure he wasn't the best engineer in the galaxy, not by a longshot, but at least he could do it.

"Hello?" Kurt called out as he went into the garage.

 

[Adder]

“He—”

BANG

“Shet.”

Rubbing her forehead, Adder peeked out from under the engine block and waved at [member="Kurt Meyer"]. “Over here!”

She wiped a smear of oil from her cheek and sat up, beaming a tired smile at the student. “Kali-U treating you alright, Kurt?”

All told, the boy didn’t look too happy, now that she could see him better. The pilot knew well the toils of academia, even if they were more than a decade behind her now. Couldn’t say she missed all those nights trying to cram equations into her brain, with every cell in her body screaming for sleep and food.

Guess where she’d picked up her caf addi— habit.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

Kurt perked an eyebrow. "Yeah it's alright."

That wasn't entirely a lie. Kalinda University was honestly one of the nicest places he had ever seen, much less lived. The people were nice and the Professors tried to help as much as they could, but things were always difficult in this sort of environment for Kurt. He wasn't really an academic sort of guy, more of a...well winging it and see what would come about sort of person. It had served him well in the Navy, even better as a Courier...not so much as a student.

"It's tough." He admitted. "I get through it with some help though."

Kurt shrugged. "Hopefully it endears me to my girlfriend instead of annoying her."

That was a rather large fear that he had. He tried not to call Jamie often, but compared to him she was much...smarter, and thus on certain more complex questions for his homework he tended to call on her. It usually worked out pretty well, when he could remember the time difference.

 

[Adder]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

A small laugh escaped her. Ah, college days.

“She studies Engineering too, then?” she asked as she crawled fully from under the engine. Well, part of it, anyway – it was suspended on cables and rigging at various heights, depending on what she needed to work on. Fine-tuning was the name of the game here.

For what she had in mind for this ship, the factory settings simply wouldn’t do.

Speaking of – “You ever tried overclocking a hyperdrive, Kurt?” The pilot moved over to her workbench and reached for the thermos sitting at one corner. The smell of fresh caf spilled from the container as she began to pour herself a cuppa.

“Want one?”

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

"No." Kurt said with a smile. "I don't think she knows the first thing about starship engines, she just...well she's smarter than me."

It was true enough. Sure he could fix up a hyperdrive or an ion engine, but when it came to the academic side of it he was almost entirely useless. That was why he needed Jamie. She knew the academic side of it, the math. Much better than he ever could. "She's more into...politics."

Jamie didn't have a degree from Kalinda, but he figured being elected Queen of Naboo was probably just about as good as you could get in the field of Politics, at least for someone her age. She was already more experienced than he would ever be.

"Yeah, once or twice." He winced at the memory.

"Didn't go well the first time." Kurt had accidentally caused the hyperdrive on the Messa to explode when he'd overclocked it, something that had nearly killed him. "Second time it was alright though."

When she asked him about Caf Kurt only shook his head.

 

[Adder]

“Ah.” Adder chuckled as she sipped the caf. Though the halls were by no means cold, the warm beverage felt like a balm after several hours of lying on the metal floor.

“Politics? In her twenties? Damn.” A shrug. “Gotta start early, I guess.”

Her nod was a short one as she pushed off the workbench, slowly wandering past the dissected engine block. Tinkering, for her, was like writing was for others – sometimes it was best to leave a piece be for a couple days, then come back later and figure out what wasn’t working.

The pilot led [member="Kurt Meyer"] around to the other rack, where the Specter-class hyperdrive lay sprawled over several meters of straps and hooks.

“Think we can avoid a fire alarm this time?” Adder asked with a light smile, handing the student her backup kit. Where they were going, a hydrospanner wouldn’t be enough.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

"Like I said." Kurt shrugged. "A lot smarter."

There wasn't really much else to say on the subject. Jamie was a smart cookie, intuitive towards others and knew how to get things done. Kurt wished that he had half the drive she did, though it was a subject matter he'd never really raised with her.

He was happy just to start doing things. "Probably."

Kurt said with a smirk, grabbing the kit.

"Don't need it." He flashed his bracelet at her. "This is the only tool-kit that I need."

 

[Adder]

“Ah, right.” She laughed, shaking her head. “You mentioned that. Guess I’m getting on in the years.” A light shrug of her human shoulder was all that she gave as she ducked under the dissected hyperdrive, taking up the other side.

“So I figure you’re a tinker like me, yeah?” She peered at the taller man under the belly of the core before she went back to releasing the alluvial dampers. “Which bits do ya wanna do? Kahn said this is advanced stuff for your class anyways, so anything you help make here’ll get you some sweet extra credits.”

Not that it hadn’t taken a bit of persuasion – but once Adder reminded the grumpy old man that it was how she’d gotten her start, he had to relent.

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

Kurt thought for a moment.

When he and Kaile had worked on the Messa neither of them had really chosen a specific task to actually fulfill. They generally moved about and did whatever they could whenever they could. It was really just a mish mash of whatever they felt like doing at the moment. He frowned for a moment, thinking about it.

”Engines.” That had always been his favorite part.

Hed started his engineering “career” when he was still podracing back on Tatooine. Him and his father had built the podracer he'd used to win the Boonta Eve almost from scratch. It was what had made the entire thing so memorable.

”Always my favorite part.“ He shrugged. ”Besides, dad always said you should build engine up.”

 

[Adder]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Her voice emerged somewhere from the depths of the hyperdrive motivator. “Your dad’s a smart man. Don’t matter how pretty a ship you built if the engine doesn’t work, amrite?”

You could practically hear the eyeroll in her tone. “Can’t tell ya how many designers I’ve watched botch a great boat that way. You ask me, their kind shouldn’t be let near no shipbuildin’ plans until us engineers are damn near finished.”

There was a beat of silence as the pilot wrested one of the charging plates free, setting it down on the workbench before returning for the next one.

“So what was your first build, Kurt?”

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

"Podracer." Technically the build hadn't been his, but more his father, but it was the first thing he'd actually worked on extensively.

He and his dad had worked on that thing tirelessly. Most of the parts had been sourced from Tusken Raiders, though others had come from local scrap yards and other places no one really looked twice if something went missing. They had always been a poor family, and Kurt's aptitude for racing had been something they had to indulge quietly. It helped that his father was a very good engineer, literally building one of the fastest pods on Tatooine from trash.

Of course Kurt liked to think he helped. "Me and my dad actually."

No reason to lie to Adder.

"We built it over the course of a few months when I was fifteen." He smiled as he grabbed one of the rags off the floor and set to work. "Entered the Boonta Eva with it."

 

[Adder]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Adder let out a low whistle. “Nice. I’ve never been – not on Tatooine, anyway.” She clicked her tongue and chuckled. “One too many times on Coruscant, though. ‘Course, we didn’t have no racing tracks down in the Underbelly, so we just made our own.”

She hefted the next plate out of the engine and dropped it bodily on the workbench. “Figures they’d arrest us for it.”

Bringing her trusty hydrospanner to bear on the remaining plates of the hyperdrive, the woman continued. “Do you miss it? Podracing?”

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

He shrugged. "Sometimes."

It was easy enough to admit. There was something about the risk that Kurt found appealing, something that he couldn't really describe. There was always a rush, not like piloting a spacecraft, not even like dogfightging an enemy in the sky. It was something entirely different.

In a race, it was just you and the machine, nothing else. The rush of it was something completely different than anything he'd ever experienced before or since. Kurt loved racing, it was in a way what he had been made for. Of course, now that he was going to school he hadn't actually touched a pod in what seemed like forever.

"I'd thought about going back." He told Adder. "Or Well, I'd thought about getting into swoop racing."

A sport that was much more popular in the galaxy. "Decided to go to school instead."

 

[Adder]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

She nodded to no-one in particular and slid the last plate out. Feth, these things were heavy. Adder caught her breath and took another generous sip of her caf. Ah, that’s the stuff.

“I haven’t raced… oh, must a decade by now.” She chuckled, leaning on the chassis of the fighter. Didn’t even have the hull yet. Kahn had called her pretentious for going with phrik, but it was either that or beskar – with the speeds she was looking at, and the build she was making, nothing else would hold out.

“It’s a good call, you know. Makes everything easier down the line.” Like getting a contract gig with Kal-U, for example.

Adder set her caf down and wiped an oil stain off her shirt. If combining two hyperdrives hadn’t been her dumbest idea yet… she shook her head and got back into it. Provided it didn’t go up in flames somewhere halfway through the construction, Sundancer was going to be the most ambitious fighter design to ever see the light of day.

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

Kurt shrugged as he pulled a small power pylon off the engine, inspecting it for a moment before he dropped it onto a nearby tray. He wondered briefly if this place was safety rated, though ultimately he decided it probably didn't matter all that much.

If they exploded, they exploded. "To be honest, I'm not very good at it."

School wasn't the place for him, Kurt had known that much from the very beginning of this venture. He wasn't meant to sit in a class room, he wasn't meant to do homework, and he most certainly wasn't meant for any level of academia. Part of him still wanted to run away and ditch all of this, go work on the racetracks, but Adder was right about what she said. It was better for his future. That was why he had come here in the first place after all.

So he and Jamie could have a future.

"Terrible actually." His holographic tool popped into life as he began to work on the Engine couplings. "Pretty sure most of my teachers think I'm an idiot."

 

[Adder]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Her snort echoed through the emptied hull of the Specter-class hyperdrive. She’d had a slightly older version of this beauty back on Phantom Limb. Magnificent piece of engineering, had to give it to the Alderaan folks. She’d tinkered with it plenty over the years, overclocking it beyond its factory-shipped class. She’d nulled the warranty of course, but no company covered intra-atmospheric microjumps.

Not even with a drive made for that sort of thing.

Which was, of course, the reason why she was out here in the first place, dissecting this majestic work of art like a lab frog in Bio 101.

“Give yourself some credit, Kurt,” she added after a beat. Only her legs were still peeking out of the shell of the fighter, dangling left and right as she battled with the alluvial dampers. “Khan said you’re his best student.”

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

"Ah yes, but this I can do." It came naturally to him, engineering and working with his hands.

There was something to it that he just understood. It was probably due to the lessons of his father. Building his pod-racer, working on The Messa and The Coil, everything he had done up until now. It all came to him even without a thought. Most of the parts he worked with he couldn't even name, and if someone asked him to draw what an engine looked like taken apart...he'd be at a complete loss. That was just who he was, not book smart, but something else.

"It's the lessons I have trouble with." He told her. "Kalinda doesn't just let you skate at what you're good at."

Unfortunately. "You have to take a host of classes."

He sighed.

"Like Macro economics in the field of Starships." Which was about as confusing as it could actually get. "I have no idea what that has to do with engineering, but apparently it's important to understand how starship manufacturers factor into the galactic economy."

For some stupid reason.

 

[Adder]

[member="Kurt Meyer"]

Adder near-on slammed her head into the hyperdrive for the second time that night. Her laughter sounded odd from the inside of the stripped hull, bouncing off the half-installed systems.

“I think that’s par for the course,” she spoke, still grinning as she unwound the coils from the generator. Almost there. “Your girlfriend’s in politics, right? That crap is practically married to economics. Maybe she can help you out?”

She shrugged at nothing in particular and rolled out of the starfighter with the coils in one hand and hydrospanner in the other. “You don’t need to be the best. You just need to pass. When you start working nobody asks for your grades. They just want someone competent, and you’ve got that covered already.”

 

[Kurt Meyer]

[member="Adder"]

Of course Kurt already had Jamie helping, and his parents, and some of the other students. The people at Kalinda were surprisingly supportive of everyone, not that it helped all that much. Kurt had found that he could study as much as possible and sitll not really understand what he was talking about. Still, Adder had a point. He didn't have to be the best or the brightest, he simply had to get to a point where he got a passing grade.

He could do that at least. "She does help."

Kurt said, not wanting Adder to think that Jamie would just leave him hanging. He wasn't entirely sure how she managed it, especially given that she was so busy, but somehow Jamie made small tidbits of time to help him out. Probably because she didn't want him to flunk.

"I'll make it." He sounded more like he was trying to assure himself. "Just have to..."

Kurt trailed off as he snapped one of the couplings he was working. "I can fix that."