Private Grease Monkey Tango

[Osira Perris]

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The garage; if that's what it could really be called, reeked of grease and ozone. Osira Perris loved it. That scent clung to clothes long after you left, a brand stamped into fabric and skin, the kind that told anyone with half a nose where your true allegiance lay: machine and oil. It was the smell of her childhood and every year since.

The place was half workshop, half graveyard. Metal scraps and twisted panels sat in organised heaps across each corner. A fuel cell hissed faintly in the shadows. Spools of wiring uncoiled across the floor like the shed skins of some industrial serpent, yet with a strange sense of organisation. Overhead, a set of ceiling lights made up for a broken lumen that flickered with an uneven pulse, throwing bursts of white across the clutter before dimming again. Every surface was layered with tools and pieces of ship; an organised-chaotic map of where her brother's hands had been.

And at the centre of it all: THE ship.
The Rogue T-91.
Sleek lines buried beneath panels, its underbelly sparking as Kelly's welder flared. Each hiss of heat showered the deck with orange light, bright against the dim belly of the hangar. One hell of a ship, Osira thought, and right now it was the only thing she had eyes for. Well, her and her brother. He hadn't noticed her yet, of course. Typical. Like any Perris, Kelly would sooner spot a faulty circuit than his own sister standing five steps away.

She let it go on longer than necessary, a grin tugging at her mouth. Then she pitched her voice high with mock offense.

"You know, most people at least say hello when their long-lost, devastatingly charming little sister shows up." Her words bounced off durasteel walls, cutting through the steady hum of machines. She already expected the reaction, he would freeze mid-spark, mutter something, probably a curse under his breath and then either carry on working or pull himself begrudgingly out of his task. Osira was already moving in, striding across the scattered floor like she owned the place. She exaggerated each step, making a little performance out of weaving between tools and half-assembled parts.

"What? No hug? No confetti? Not even a snack waiting?" she continued, shaking her head with mock dismay. "Standards have really slipped. However, this..." Her hand tapped the cool plating of the T-91, fingertips lingering with visible affection. "This is a beauty. Who'd you steal her from, and why wasn't I invited?"

She hopped onto a crate without asking, the metal groaning under her weight, and swung her legs. Her boots drummed a lazy rhythm on the deck, the sound echoing faintly through the garage. It took her a second to realize the pattern; an old Corellian marching beat she hadn't thought about in years. Her oversized black boots made a complete mess of it, but she kept at it anyway.

"Don't tell me you didn't miss me," she pressed, smiling warmly toward her brother, tilting her head just enough for her hair to fall across her face. "Because I know you did."

Kelly T. Perris

 

[Kelly T. Perris]

"THE GARAGE"
LOCATION CLASSIFIED

Anytime Kelly Perris got his hands on a new starfighter, he took the time to know her inside and out. Sometimes that necessitated actually digging into her internals, if something seemed the slightest bit off or wholly unfamiliar or new. The T-91 Vigilant was kitted out in ways he’d not experienced in a single bird before, able to operate truly independently, and in stealth; she was as much of a warship, if not more of one than the birds he’d flown for the Alliance. So he had to know more, and it was one thing to read a manual, another to be hands-on.

All of the organised chaos in the Garage wasn’t from this vessel, what with her capability for self-repair — though the sheer organisation of said chaos was his doing — but the sorted mess was the so-called graveyard this space also served as. Salvage from ships come and gone and permanently grounded, touched with a little of his 'leave a place better than you found it.' Way of thought that did just as well indoors as it did out in the wilds, and being out here was wilds-like in some kind of way.

More uncertainty than he'd ever been dunked in, having traded the safety of being attached to a fleet in the Alliance, for the autonomous, deniable ops he now was a part of running after a leadership shuffle in the wake of an unsanctioned op. Yes, even they had orders out here - clandestine was the word, not vigilantism.

Still, he'd have done the same in Gorne's shoes. That was something he had to keep his lips zipped about.

But the bird he'd been flying these few months? He’d only popped the girl open to finally take a gander at her guts, take a peek at what ran where, what interacted with what, and so on, and was in the midst of getting her closed her back up when a voice he hadn’t heard in more than a hot minute cut through his focus like a table knife through soft butter.

The sudden interruption forced the sparks to come to an abrupt stop, a cut off that happened when the opposite hand (which was keeping steady the piece being welded) slipped, and a curse, haphazardly selected from the vast list in his head, punctuated his surprise in the thin moment between the loss and regaining of control.

Another, softer string of filthy mutterings accompanied finishing the weld he’d been in the middle of, and only then did he bend his head down and away from the hull with his sister’s continued chatter, and stared at her for a long moment through tinted lenses, before pulling his goggles up to his forehead with the fingers he could spare.

A half-committed chuckle rose in his throat, “Come hold this panel up so I can finish this quick,” he replied, giving her a once-over, before he gestured at her with the macrofuser in his hand, “uh, ‘less you want a weld with that hug.”

★ Osira Perris ★​