Sevrin
The heat beneath the main reactor assembly had been blistering, but as Olarra crawled deeper into the unlit structural spine of the
Imperial I Star Destroyer, the atmosphere shifted to a suffocating, freezing dark. Thick layers of century-old starship grease and oxidized industrial dust coated the narrow catwalks. She had pulled her tailored wool traveling coat back on to combat the deep-space chill radiating from the unpowered hull, but her protective apron remained securely buckled over it, cluttered with her jadeite detailing tools and structural markers.
She flipped down her sleek, lightweight blast-goggles over her amber eyes. The visor's digital overlay immediately link-synced with her natural thermal and near-infrared vision, displaying real-time cooling metrics and scanning cross-sections across her field of view.
"SAMI, do you copy?" Olarra spoke into her collar-comms, her voice echoing softly against the massive, vaulted durasteel bulkheads.
"I'm looking at the primary structural housing for the Class 2 hyperdrive array. Uplinking a structural wireframe sweep to the ship mainframe now."
SAMI's smooth, measured, and highly collaborative vocal cadence chimed directly into her ear-piece as its bio-computer processing core received the data.
"Data stream stabilized, Olarra. Rendering a three-dimensional synthesis projection of the bracket array aboard the Fool's Errand. Initial telemetry indications show a massive, twelve-percent density drop across the portside stabilizer anchor. The physics indicate severe crystal lattice shear under hyperspace deceleration forces."
"That's exactly what I'm seeing," Olarra murmured, squinting through her visor as she watched the molecular heat signatures bleed unevenly across the metal.
"The factory welding line was hurried. They didn't compress the beads correctly when they fused the braces."
"Keep your processors cool, SAMI. I'm tagging them now," Olarra scoffed with a free-spirited grin, shifting her weight onto a narrow scaffolding beam.
Reaching out with her gloved hand, she deliberately unlatched her alchemical leather forging glove, pressing her bare cerulean palm directly onto the freezing, raw durasteel of the primary hyperdrive support bracket. She was instantly flooded with images of a massive orbital dry-dock above Kuat, the rhythmic, thunderous vibration of a heavy industrial forge press, and the specific, intense feelings of frustration from a long-dead Imperial shipwright who had purposely masked a hairline fracture in the metal to hit a wartime production deadline. The metal's memory wasn't a clean schematic, but it gave her a map—a jagged puzzle piece showing exactly where the atomic bonds were beginning to fracture under structural stress.
Olarra snapped her eyes open, her amber gaze sharp as she pulled a digital plasma marker from her apron. Guided by the psychometric echo and SAMI's math, she began drawing bright, fluorescent molecular stress boundaries directly across the ancient metal, clearly mapping out the structural failures for the Remnant's engineers.
As she climbed down from the catwalk and squeezed into the dust-choked ventilation conduit, Olarra laid flat on her back, and pulled off the strap of her blast-goggles. As she focused here eyes, her vision shifted entirely into the thermal spectrum as she traced the uneven cooling lines in the environmental vent valve.
"OK SAMI, log sector three of the valve array as cleared," Olarra whispered into her collar-comms.
"The molecular lattice is holding up, but the power throughput lines are failing."
"Data synchronized, Olarra," SAMI's smooth, conversational voice chimed inside her ear-piece.
"A three-dimensional rendering of the grid is active aboard the Fool's Errand. I must alert you that a sudden, localized friction spike has been detected through the bulkhead immediately to your left. Mechanical calculations indicate manual metal tool manipulation."
"Veecee, is that you messing with my diagnostic tools again?" Olarra grumbled over the channel.
"Negative," her E-B loader droid's cynical voice crackled back from the ship's hangar pad
. "I am currently performing mandatory maintenance on our hydraulic cooling sleeves."
Her curiosity spiked upon hearing SAMI's alert. Olarra had been unaware of anyone else working in her immediate area. Having been alone most of the day, she smirked free-spiritedly, wondering who else had made their way there. Setting her datapad aside and shifting her weight with an athletic grace, she pressed her gloved palms against a loose, rusted secondary ventilation grate and shoved. With a dull, mechanical pop, the metal frame gave way, and Olarra smoothly dropped through the ceiling, landing lightly on her feet amidst a swirling cloud of pulverized insulation dust.
She found herself standing inside a dark, long-forgotten officer's quarters that had already been heavily picked over. But she wasn't alone.
Standing right beside a warped vanity unit was another laborer, holding a compact hydrospanner and a freshly pried-open concealed wall safe. Startled at seeing the stranger in the shadows, Olarra took a breath and considered him. As if from nowhere her breath caught in her chest. Before she could smile or offer a friendly introduction, her latent sensitivity spiked suddenly. A profound, contradictory wave of raw energy rolled off the stranger's immediate presence. She felt comforting pockets of warmth clashing violently against a freezing, jagged itch of phantom pain and aggression. Her golden-hued tattoos tingled beneath her leather gloves, a silent, intuitive warning from the deeper currents of the universe.
Instead of panicking or retreating, the young Pantoran simply brushed the dust off her heat-resistant Corellian apron and let out a soft, amused sigh.
"Found a nice haul?," Olarra asked as she stepped toward an upturned durasteel crate.
"Oh, don't look at me like that, friend. I'm just a freelance structural inspector. I was tracking vent lines when my scanner detected a friction spike in this bulkhead so I popped in to check it out. I don't care about the Remnant's quotas, and I definitely don't care about their locked boxes. I plan to dig some up myself once my reports are finalized."
She grabbed her thermos from its drop pouch and unscrewed the lid, pouring a steaming, rich cup of
Tarine Tea, the smooth alpine aroma instantly cutting through the suffocating smell of corrosion and scorched wires. With a warm, free-spirited smile, she extended the jadeite cup directly toward Sevrin.
"I'm Olarra."
Olarra Zand
Olarra Zand