Private There's a Lot in Commenor

[Nixie Voidskipper]

The Planet Commenor: The Colonies Region


​

There was a lot to see on an ancient world like Commenor, from the fancy clothing and the parades, to the old architecture and the many many outposts from the times when different Galactic Governments had held sway, and occupied these many worlds. In spite of everything, the Colonies always seemed to end up in the hands of the Empire, and Commenor no less than any of the others, had a storied history under the iron fisted rule. Not that a teenager ever cared much about the history of old places - no matter how much history it had - and Nixie was no different than most teenagers in spite of her own torrid past on Corellia.

Commenor was so unlike where she had been and where she had come from, and though the streets bustled and the shops thrived, the markets were a long street of paved and cobbled roads, and the shops were sturdy and unscarred, Nix felt she could relax for a moment. A group of Cadets disembarked from an Imperial shuttle, all dressed up in their officer's uniforms on too small and too young looking frames and faces. Each one of them had a pill shaped cap adorning their heads, and while most of the uniforms matched in a brand-new looking bone white, a couple had gray or black, denoting that they were destined for an Officer's path. Nix was among them, laughing and play fighting, something she rarely did and never did in front of her betters.

In no time, she exclaimed that she wanted to see the shipyards, and the old derelict ships in the junkyard. She'd always had a weakness for old things, and she was always on the lookout to find the single-cockpit fighter of her dreams. A pure-white Chiss Clawcraft. A rare TIE variant that was almost never seen in the Core Worlds, and hardly ever seen anywhere beyond. She smoothed her unruly black hair and waved goodbye to the other cadets, as they darted off in various directions - some to sample food and drink, and others to seek out more entertaining pursuits.

Nix on the other hand had her own mission, so she sturdied her features - aware that an Imperial's look and gait was how they presented themselves and therefore the whole Empire to the greater Galaxy - and set off for the shipyards first. The first thing she noticed was how few non-humans were here, and that there were almost no non-humanoids. That was a refreshing thought. In Ancient Times - she had heard from older officers - the Empire sought to elevate only humans and their close cousins, not the wretched scum that populated the marshes and backwaters of the greater Galaxy.

With the barest hint of a smile, Nixie hurried her gait. She didn't want to miss out. She fully intended to use the bulk of her time scanning the scrapyards for what she had dreamed of. A consolation prize would be a tour of the shipyards themselves. Newer ships weren't as interesting, but they were almost as fascinating.

When she finally rounded the street she was looking for and saw the great towering derelicts, she noticed another girl close to her age there. Nix hadn't expected that.

Lyra Ventor
​

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra Ventor had not expected to feel like a stranger walking the streets of her own home.

Growing up, Commenor had always felt familiar, an anchor in a shifting galaxy. She knew the rhythm of the markets, the ancient architecture that had stubbornly survived more governments than anyone could count, and the long, winding streets that curved between districts like veins through an old heart. Yet now, after months away, having seen the galaxy through a cockpit canopy rather than from the pavement, everything felt slightly smaller, as if the world she had outgrown was struggling to hold her.

The visit with her family had gone better than she had dared to hope. She had spent hours explaining the reality of the Hidden Path and the purpose of Striker Squadron, watching the complex emotions play across her parents' faces. Her mother's worry was an open book, while her father's attempt at stoicism failed spectacularly, yet beneath the fear, there was a new layer of respect. They had listened, and for the first time, they seemed to truly see the woman she had become.

As she walked, Lyra noticed the atmosphere of the planet itself felt lighter. The suffocating weight of the Imperial presence had thinned; the uniforms were fewer, the checkpoints quieter, and the pervasive sense of being watched had begun to dissipate. The Empire wasn't fully gone, but it no longer seemed to own the very air she breathed.

With her jacket slung over one shoulder and a tool pouch weighted at her hip, she let her feet lead her toward the familiar, towering silhouettes of the shipyards. This was the part of Commenor that never changed: the rusting hulls rising like monuments beyond the perimeter fences, where broken freighters leaned against one another like weary war veterans with stories no one had time to hear. The air here was thick with the comforting, sharp scent of old durasteel and ionized wiring.

The Starling was running beautifully, but a pilot never passed up a chance to scavenge. There was a unique thrill in finding a rare component hidden beneath decades of grime. Something that looked like junk to a scavenger but like gold to a mechanic.

Lyra slipped through the rusted gate and into the sprawl of derelicts, her blue eyes scanning the scrap instinctively. She slowed, however, when she caught sight of another figure standing near one of the shattered hulls.

Her internal alarms didn't blare, but they certainly hummed. The other girl looked to be roughly her own age, but she was dressed in the crisp, unmistakable grey of an Imperial officer's uniform. It was a jarring sight in a place defined by decay, yet Lyra didn't pull away. She had spent enough time in the stars to know that a uniform didn't always tell the whole story, even if it did make her hand twitch instinctively toward her tool pouch.

Maintaining a curious but relaxed posture, Lyra tilted her head and closed the distance, keeping her tone light and conversational despite the Imperial insignia staring back at her.

"Didn't expect to run into company out here, especially not someone in such a clean uniform," she said, hands slipping easily into her jacket pockets to hide the slight tension in her fingers. She offered a faint, disarming smile as her gaze flicked from the officer to the piles of scrap surrounding them. "Are you hunting for something specific, or are you just here to admire the galaxy's finest collection of forgotten starships?"

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Oh, little did she know that this uniform not only told the whole story, but it was on it's way to tell as many more horror stories as the time allowed. After all, Nix was an Imperial cadet, and one of the most promising students the Empire had produced in a very long time. If she didn't die in a fiery mishap, or misstep her way into a Jedi or Sith's path, she had the potential to do so very very much harm. However, on this day she was just one more pilot, on her way to a salvage yard looking for the right piece of scrap or a story to tell at the Academy. Two very different people, with two very similar passions had just found themselves in the same place.

Nix could have passed for either a boy or girl from that distance, but as she casually closed the distance, it was apparent that she was a girl. Not a terribly feminine girl, but one with soft features that belied the vicious creature within. She started by closing the distance to the gate that Lyra had passed through already, and stopped for just a moment.

Of course she was intent on the piles of junk that to her - which both of them shared in common - was not junk at all, but a treasure trove of living history and components. Each one engineered to perfection, to achieve something that only a few species could manage on their own, and many that had gone extinct had left behind as their only legacy. She stood there for a while, observing the scavenger, and then squeezed through the rusted gate with a little more effort than Lyra had required.

"Hello there," she responded with an unusual friendliness in her clipped Imperial Core accent, measured and as always, tempered by her own guarded nature.

She could already feel the suspicion - not at all unusual since Imperials were not well liked - and could see Lyra's hands moving around, probably looking for a weapon or something to defend herself, but Nix wasn't concerned about that. She had grown up in the worst slums imaginable, and everything about Lyra - her tension, her suspicion, her entire reaction - was wholly expected. It actually made Nix relax a little. It wasn't often she met someone who had nothing at all to hide.

She didn't answer Lyra's question right away but when she finally dragged her eyes away from the curved hull of what looked like a Mon Calamari gunship towaring over almost everything else in the distance, she eventually spoke again. This time inquisitively - maybe even a touch gentle. "What do you think are the odds of finding an AH 1701 gyro in this mess?"

A tiny smile tugged at her lips. Mischievous perhaps, but long enough that for a moment, she seemed almost as much of a kid as Lyra.

She pulled the flap of her jacket and let it open, a simple white tanktop underneath which form fit her slender frame, then let it slide down her arms. She looked back up towards the piles which stacked so high, some seemed in danger of causing an avalanche of metal and plasti-steel. She folded her jacket with a practiced motion, and then looked back at Lyra, her eyebrow quirking as if in a challenge. Slight smile still fixed to her lips.

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra followed the other girl's gaze up toward the towering curve of the Mon Cal hull, the massive carcass of the ship looming over the yard like some rusting sea creature stranded far from its ocean.

The question about the AH-1701 gyro pulled a soft, appreciative whistle from her before she could stop it.

"That piece is a treasure in itself," she said, the faint smile still lingering on her lips.

Her eyes swept the scrapyard again, instinctively reading the piles the way a pilot read debris fields. Most of the closer wrecks had been stripped clean long ago, picked apart by scavengers and yard workers who knew exactly where the valuable components would be hiding.

She lifted a hand and pointed deeper into the yard, toward a cluster of ships leaning together in the distance. Their hulls were older, their plating darker with age, and the pathways between them looked far less traveled.

"If there's one still intact on this planet," she continued, "it's probably not sitting anywhere obvious."

Her finger traced the direction again.

"Further off the beaten path," she said. "Out where the older ships ended up, and nobody bothered digging through them yet."

Lyra lowered her hand and glanced back at the cadet, studying her for a second longer now that they were standing face to face.

The uniform still made her wary.

But the question she'd asked? That sounded like a pilot.

"If you're really looking for an AH-1701," she added lightly, "that's where I'd start."

A faint, almost conspiratorial grin appeared.

"Worst case? We come back with a good story and a tetanus shot."

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Nix followed her through the paths that had been made by heavy machines, vehicles, and junker droids through what looked to be precariously balanced piles of nothing but junk. She spotted pistons in one pile, a wingfoil from a TIE Interceptor - a lot of Imperial ships had been stacked here after the last invasion and "liberation" of the Colonies - a series of fully stripped Gozanti Cruiser shells sat piled next to and overlapping one another. Even a Lamda shuttle that looked almost untouched except for the scorch marks on nearly every inch of the hull. None of that was what they were looking for though. What they wanted was small, cube-shaped, and could only be found in a Corellian ship like the YT freighter class, or the VCX line.

Crunching along the pathway, Nixie had hung her jacket over her shoulder, and was now just in a simple white tanktop and the pants from her uniform. If she cared about getting them dirty though, she didn't seem to mind. She was quick to catch up with Lyra, and kept her hands casually in her pockets to give the sense of a casual stroll. They were, after all, on one.

There was no malice here. Even her fellow cadets knew how quick to jump she was. If there was any sense of impropriety, she'd be knives out already. Honestly, Nix already sort of liked Lyra. She was better company than the stuffy sons-of-Moffs in the Cadet Academy. A thought occurred to her. Lyra was young, not to far off from her own age.

Before she could stop herself, she had already blurted out her thoughts; "Why's someone like you not training at the Academy?" Once said, it could not be unsaid, so she finished her thought; "There's never enough good pilots or mechanics."

Lyra didn't have a chance to answer, before Nix came up with her own answer; "I'll bet there wasn't enough time after the Empire left for the Null Zone, and the Covenant moved in. Nasty folk, those..." she scoffed.

Then she suddenly dropped her coat. She stopped where she stood and turned to face Lyra again. "I've got an idea. How about a race?" Then took off running, her forgotten Imperial coat left in the trash. She was off in the maze. Making a break for the place Lyra had described. It was surely a long way from where they started. The oldest ships - before the plague - would be somewhere buried beneath and behind the wrecks of newer ships.

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra moved easily through the scrapyard, stepping over twisted durasteel ribs and half-buried engine housings with the instinctive, practiced awareness of someone who had spent a lifetime navigating wreckage fields. Her eyes flicked constantly across the rusted piles as they walked, cataloguing shapes and components automatically as her mind worked through potential repairs.

The question caught her off guard, momentarily breaking her focus on the salvage around them. She glanced sideways at Nix, her expression softening into something more thoughtful.

"The Empire's not really my crowd," she said lightly, and while there was no bitterness in her voice, there was a quiet, unshakable certainty behind the words.

She thought back to the dozens of recruitment officers who had darkened their doorstep on Commenor, each one more persistent than the last after her stunt at Thresh-Colony. They had seen a prodigy to be polished and pointed at a target, but her mother, Novessa, had stood like an iron wall between Lyra and every single offer. Novessa had shut the door on the military, the intelligence agencies, and even the private firms, famously stopping them all in their tracks with a look that promised violence if they ever returned.

It wasn't until Lyra had finally left home, carving out her own path away from her mother's protective shadow, that she truly understood the weight of that legacy. "Besides…I already fly," she added, a small grin tugging at the corner of her mouth as she reclaimed her autonomy. "And I've become quite fond of the fact that I get to fix my own ship whenever I'm the one who breaks it."

When Nix mentioned the Covenant and the Null Zone, Lyra offered only a vague shrug, as politics had carved through Commenor enough times that she'd long ago stopped trying to track the shifting tides of every faction that claimed ownership of her home planet. "Something like that," she replied noncommittally.

Then, without warning, Nix dropped her coat.

Lyra blinked in genuine surprise, her mouth opening to call out a protest. "Wait—"

It was already too late; the Imperial cadet had already taken off running, disappearing into the jagged skyline of the yard. For half a second, Lyra just stared at the abandoned coat lying in the dust, and then a fresh laugh bubbled up from her chest as she felt the familiar spark of competition ignite.

"Oh, you are absolutely on."

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

They dashed and jumped over and off of sturdy wrecks, causing parts to tumble from their piles and spin and summersault behind them, which they both vaulted and lept over as they navigated their way through the winding paths around bend and curve, but they were forced to stop when a junkyard droid rounded the corner and, clearly upset, bared it's glowing yellow eyes at them. It shouted through a well-worn voice emitter;

"You! You there! You can't be in here! It's not sa--" but the droid - who's chassis was made up of a hovering skirt, was cut off by a pile of junk breaking free and crashing down around it. It's many arms flailed as it fell, buried under the wreckage. She hid her face behind her hands, stifling the laughter that inflated her cheeks.

She looked at Lyra, "He'll be fine." and then grinned, and took off down another fork, which led through a narrower, darker corridor.

The path she chose was dark, and you could barely see the sky and the sun wasn't visible at all through the peaks and traversable valleys. Thankfully the path widened out shortly after they entered and then they were left with a choice. One trail went to the left and looked like it might come out close to where they wanted to go, and the path to the right that descended and went down further into darkness. Nix slowed and stopped, reached down and picked up an unidentifiable metal object, and without stopping, tossed it down the path to the right, thudded against the dirt and scrap, and then tumbled down out of sight.

She turned around and looked to see if Lyra had gotten this far with her. "Which way do think we should go?" She almost asked jokingly. It should have been obvious which way they should go, but Lyra seemed to be from here, and Nix wasn't so arrogant that she thought she could just run down a random path and know where she was going. At least the junk piles here looked more packed and sturdy than where they'd come from. It was clear they were getting closer to their destination.

An engine from a B-Wing stuck out above them, bridging the gap over the path they walked. This was a pretty old ship, and definitely from the right era. As much junk was here, it would take quite a big impact to dislodge anything -- so Nix hoped.

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra skidded to a stop a step behind Nix, one hand bracing briefly against the rusted plating of a half-collapsed hull as the last of the falling debris from their sprint settled somewhere behind them.

She glanced back toward where the junkyard droid had disappeared under the avalanche of scrap, then back to Nix.

"Yeah…he'll survive," she said between quick breaths, a grin still tugging at the edge of her mouth.

Her eyes moved immediately to the fork in the path.

For a moment, she didn't answer. She crouched slightly, scanning the deeper shadows the way a pilot studied debris fields. Her gaze moved across stacked fuselage plates, broken struts, the skeletal outline of a B-Wing engine overhead, and then down the darker corridor.

There.

Her finger lifted, pointing down the right-hand path where Nix's tossed scrap had vanished into the gloom.

"That way," she said confidently.

She stepped forward a pace and leaned slightly to get a better angle between two collapsed hull frames.

"See that?"

In the dim light, barely visible between the scrap piles, a rounded cylinder nose poked out from under a collapsed freighter hull. The plating was dull and half-buried, but the shape was unmistakable to anyone who had ever worked on Corellian ships.

"Hollow engine capsule," she explained. "YT-type freighter."

Her grin widened.

"Which means somewhere back there is a Corellian frame."

She pushed off the hull and started down the darker path.

"And Corellian frames," she called back over her shoulder, "are exactly where you'd hide an AH-1701 gyro."

Then she picked up the pace again, boots crunching into the deeper corridor of wreckage.

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

"Really?" Nix asked with a grimace. She knew an unstable tunnel when she saw one, but they had been walking and running almost an hour and a half and this was the best opportunity to come out of this with something to show for it. She leaned against a broken piece of tailfin from an ancient ship exposed from the dirt. She was covered with a light sheen of sweat that glistened on her pale skin, which in the hour under the temperate sun had already very lightly browned.

She nodded, seeing the curved interior hull that belonged unmistakenly to a YT freighter's engine capsule. She turned her head and recognized the jagged curve of the pilot's chair laying on it's side half buried. It must have been buried here for ages, because the hull had the sun-leeched silver of a ship that had been stripped by the weather, even though it was already piled over with more junk and had become the load-bearing pillar of the pile.

Nix reached into her pocket and retrieved a thin cylinder. A button turned on a bright spotlight and suddenly they could see the old tech clearly.

The engine capsule looked pristine. The entire block, even the hyperdrive was still there.

"Right there," she said pointing her light directly at a box shaped cubby, right under where the steering column should be.

"That's in. If it's anywhere, that's where it should be." She shined the light above the exposed engine housing to the piles of random, torn apart, and useless parts bearing their weight down upon it.

"We should be fine," she said. There was no way the two of them by themselves could dislodge an entire engine block.

"Let's just take it slow." A slow grin expanded across her face,

"If we find it in there, I owe you a fizzy."

She started towards it slowly, keeping her light centered on the console as she did.

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra studied the tunnel again while Nix grimaced at it, her mechanic's instincts weighing risk against reward. The piles above them were old, but they had settled into place over the years of pressure and weather. Nothing looked freshly shifted. Nothing creaked the way unstable scrap usually did. That helped.

Her gaze followed the beam of Nix's light as it swept across the exposed hull, the familiar curves of the YT engine capsule unmistakable once you knew what to look for. Even half-buried under layers of forgotten metal, the Corellian design language stood out like a signature.

When the light landed on the cubby beneath the steering column, Lyra's eyes sharpened with recognition.

"Yeah…that's the spot," she said quietly, stepping a little closer to the opening while keeping a careful eye on the stacked wreckage above them. "If someone didn't already strip it decades ago, that's exactly where it would still be."

The capsule itself looked almost eerily intact. Sun-bleached, sure, but not gutted the way most junkyard hulks ended up. Whoever had dragged it here either hadn't known what they were looking at or had bigger pieces to salvage first.

Either way, it had been left alone.

Her attention flicked back to Nix when the other girl mentioned owing her a fizzy. The grin tugging at her lips came easily now, the earlier caution fading beneath the shared excitement of a good find.

"Deal," Lyra said, lowering her voice instinctively as if the junk piles themselves might hear them plotting.

Then she paused, realizing something she probably should have done a while ago.

"Lyra," she added, offering the name with a small nod. "Lyra Ventor."

Her eyes returned to the cubby Nix had illuminated.

"And if we actually pull an AH-1701 out of that wreck…" she continued, crouching slightly so she could peer toward the console area without jostling anything. A hint of playful confidence crept into her tone.

"I'll take you to the best place on Commenor for a fizzy."

A beat passed.

"You'll never go back to the Academy stuff again."

Carefully, slowly, Lyra stepped toward the exposed cockpit area, testing each footfall on the packed scrap beneath them.

"Alright," she murmured, eyes still on the cubby. "Let's see if we just got very lucky."

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Nix laughed at Lyra's confidence and with a cocky tilt to her head said; "I can have a fizzy on the Moons of Rodia, or the Outer Rim colonies in the Empire," she grinned and then reached forward. She flipped open the compartment and there it was, remarkably still looking in-tact and un-fused. The cube shaped computer was a miniature marvel of engineering. Un-powered, it just looked like a lump of shaped metal, but here was one of the most versatile gyrocomputers ever put to market.

Instantly, she looked around for the distinctive SSP05 hyperdrive, but the one she saw was cracked from bracing all of this weight for so long. Immediately the tension went up her neck and she turned her head to give a consternated smirk to Lyra.

"Looks like it's your turn now. I can probably get it out quickly, but you have better tools and can probably get it out with less of a risk of damaging it." She mused, mostly to herself. "It would have been nice to have gotten the matching hyperdrive and navicomputer, but the cockpit is probably under a billion tons of scrap, and the hyperdrive is over there, and completely totaled. This alone is worth at least ten-thousand credits. More if it works. and it's right there."

She tilted her head. "Have at it, Ace Mechanic," she stopped before she continued, realizing she hadn't even introduced herself yet. After all this, it was certainly about time.

"They call me 'Nixie,' by the way. 'Nix' for short. They call me a lot of other things really," she looked away for a second, "...but that's not important." She stuck out her hand towards Lyra, a sincerely friendly - but still contained smile on her lips.

This had already been quite an adventure. It wouldn't do any good to part ways after without giving the barest of acknowledgement. Not that they didn't still have to find their way back still, but it seemed like the right time anyway.

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra leaned in beside her as the compartment flipped open, the beam of Nix's light catching the unmistakable edges of the gyrocomputer tucked neatly into its housing. For a moment, she simply stared.

Then a slow, impressed whistle slipped past her lips.

"Well I'll be…" she murmured under her breath.

It really was intact. Decades buried under scrap, and somehow the little cube had survived the weight, the weather, and whatever careless salvagers had stripped the rest of the ship.

Her eyes flicked to the cracked hyperdrive when Nix pointed it out, and she gave a sympathetic wince. "Yeah…that one's definitely not coming back to life," she said quietly.

But the gyro alone? That was a prize.

When Nix stepped back and gestured toward it, Lyra chuckled softly and slid her tool pouch around to the front of her hip. Metal clinked as she popped it open and began pulling out a compact driver and a pair of slim extraction tools.

Before she crouched down, though, she took the offered hand. "Nice to meet you properly, Nix," she said warmly, giving the handshake a firm but friendly squeeze.

At the mention of fizzy drinks across the galaxy, a playful grin tugged at her lips. "Exotic places don't always make the best fizzy," she replied with a small wink.

Then she knelt beside the exposed console, carefully sliding the driver into the first ancient fastener. "Sometimes the best ones come from a little stand run by someone's grandmother who's been making the same recipe for forty years."

The first bolt loosened with a soft metallic click. Encouraging.

Lyra worked slowly, steady hands keeping the tool aligned so the old fittings didn't strip.

"Alright…" she murmured as she eased the second fastener loose, "let's see if we can get this treasure out of here without waking the entire junkyard."

Her focus sharpened as she worked, movements careful and practiced, the excitement of the find dancing quietly behind her calm concentration.

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Nixie stood guard while Lyra worked, her ear twitching when the first bolt came loose. A smile tugged at the corners of her lips, but she vigilantly peered back and forth the darkened garbage corridor while she worked. If anything came by, she'd be ready, but with what? She took a moment to examine her surroundings. A pipe stuck out of the garbage wall. Not a good idea. If anything came crashing down, they'd be risking their lives as well.

Still there wasn't a sound to indicate they'd been followed. The Junkyard droid probably hadn't even gotten free yet, and if it had, likely had decided pursuit wasn't worth it. It looked like they were in the clear. The whole time Nixie kept the light steady over Lyra's nimble hands. The girl was really talented. Or she had years of experience -- or both.

Nix shifted her feet while the second bolt snapped loose. Then the third. The whole thing felt like an eternity, but patience was a virtue, and no great treasure was ever found in an hour. Honestly, this had been a profitable journey. Even a Weequay would be proud.

"Take your time. We've got all day," Nix said encouragingly. Her hands brushed dust and dirt from the climb away on her thighs and she looked again to check how far Lyra had gotten. It wouldn't be long, after all. She was working with speed and caution that impressed even the young Imperial Cadet.

She made a mental remark that Lyra would have gone far in the Academy if she'd tried. Aptitude was how Nixie had gotten selected. Not everyone was a product of nepotism -- though admittedly, there were a lot of those.

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra barely looked up as Nix kept watch, her attention fixed on the small cluster of ancient fasteners that had not moved in decades. The first bolt had come free easily enough, but the others were stubborn in the way old Corellian fittings tended to be when time and weather had fused them in place.

Still, stubborn metal had never bothered her.

Her driver turned with careful pressure, just enough torque to move the bolt without stripping the head. When it finally gave with a faint metallic snap, a small breath escaped her nose.

"There we go…" she murmured.

The beam of Nix's light helped more than she probably realized. In the dim tunnel of scrap and shadow, it illuminated the delicate seams around the housing and the thin wiring still clinging to the gyro unit.

Lyra paused long enough to brush a thin layer of dust from the console with the back of her glove.

"You say that now," she replied lightly to Nix's encouragement, a faint grin tugging at the corner of her mouth as she reached for another tool from her pouch. "But if this thing slips and drops deeper into the console, we're digging through half a freighter to get it back."

The final bolt loosened.

She eased the driver free and set it carefully aside before sliding a narrow extraction tool beneath the edge of the cube-shaped unit. Her movements slowed even further now, the kind of steady patience only someone used to working on fragile systems could manage.

"Corellian engineering," she said quietly, more to herself than to Nix as she worked the tool beneath the mount. "They built these things to survive smugglers, pirates, and pilots who think maintenance is optional."

A soft click followed.

Lyra's eyes brightened.

"That's the release latch," she said, excitement creeping into her voice despite her attempt to stay calm.

Slowly, carefully, she lifted the cube free from its cradle.

For a moment, she just stared at it in her hands, brushing away decades of dust with her thumb.

"…Well," she said, looking up at Nix with a grin that she could no longer hide.

"Looks like we're getting those fizzies after all."

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Excitement crawled up Nix's spine as Lyra freed the gyrocomputer from it's housing, she grinned when Lyra exclaimed success, and she transfered the flashlight from her hand to between her teeth. Grabbing onto the edge of the rotten hull, she reached across the engine housing to give Lyra her hand and pull her out. Not that she couldn't have gotten herself out, but the slight tilt to the flooring was no joke. Securing her new friend, and re-emerging into the corridor, Nixie pointed at the darkening end where they had come from.

"Now that the hard part is done, we'd best get out of here. I'll take point this time and let you know if I spot one of those junkers."

Nixie let go of Lyra's hand and started along the path. Lyra had the computer in her hands and Nix was now in the most dangerous position, taking the front line where she'd be spotted first if trouble came around the corner. She was almost unarmed too. Just a hidden knife or two somewhere in her uniform - not much use against a scrap droid.

Maybe she deserved that Wing Command pip after all. She had a tendency to leave comrades in a firefight, and use other pilots as human shields in simulation - but maybe that was just something that came from all the competitiveness and bullying that the Imperial Starfighters engaged in. Perhaps this time, Nix wasn't dealing with someone who wanted to one-up her every time, and actually had given a little trust to.

Could Nix have actually found herself a friend?

She jumped from heap to heap, incline to incline and reached her arms back to help Lyra up inclines and deep grades. It had been easier getting down the path than up. Lyra protectively cradled their prize, assuring that if it broke, it wouldn't be because of her neglect.

"C'mon," Nix whispered when they finally reached the mouth of the tunnel, and were back out in slowly dimming daylight. Looks like they'd underestimated how much time it took. Nix stopped to click her flashlight off and slipped it back into her pocket, so as not to draw attention.

After a moment of dead silence, Nix tilted her head and darted across the clear path. "Let's go!" she whispered harshly, hopefully just enough volume for Lyra and no one else.

"I remember the way back, I think."

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra didn't argue when Nix reached back to pull her up. With the gyrocomputer cradled carefully in one arm, she took the offered hand and let the other girl steady her across the tilted hull. The metal groaned faintly beneath their weight, reminding her exactly why she had insisted on slow, careful movements earlier.

Once her boots found solid footing again, she instinctively shifted the cube into the crook of her arm, wrapping part of her jacket around it like an improvised cushion.

No way she was letting ten thousand credits worth of rare Corellian engineering bounce around in a junkyard.

She followed close behind Nix as they retraced their path through the dark corridor, stepping where the other girl stepped, using the protruding wreckage as handholds when the slopes steepened. A couple of times, she accepted Nix's outstretched hand on the climbs, though she kept the gyro tucked tight against her chest the whole time.

When they finally slipped out of the narrow passage and into the fading daylight, Lyra paused just long enough to glance around the scrap maze.

The sky was dimmer now. Evening was creeping in.

"Good memory," she whispered back when Nix darted across the open path.

Lyra followed quickly but carefully, keeping the gyro shielded with one arm while using the other to steady herself over a rusted stabilizer fin.

When she caught up again, she leaned closer so her voice wouldn't carry.

"If you do get turned around though…" she murmured quietly, nodding toward a distant cluster of older hulls barely visible beyond the piles.

"…there are other ways out of this place."

A faint grin tugged at her lips.

"I grew up crawling through these wrecks. There are at least three paths back to the yards that don't go anywhere near the main gate."

She shifted the wrapped gyro slightly in her arms, checking that it was still secure.

"So worst case?" she added with a quiet wink. "We take the scenic route."

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Nix stopped and pondered for a few seconds, deciding whether to continue or to take one of Lyra's other paths. "That's a pretty good plan. If we see anything, we can take one of your other routs. Sound good?" Nix reached over and took Lyra's free arm, her grip sliding down to Lyra's hand, which she then gripped and led her along.

Nix didn't know her way as well as Lyra, she just had a really good memory. They reached the halfway point without incident, but when they got to the spot where they'd entered the junkyard, a group of droids and a couple non-droids were crowded around Nix's discarded jacket.

Not a very good sign. They were blocking their exit and making certain that Nix would be in trouble if they didn't get that jacket. After a second of thought, Nix turned to Lyra, letting go of her hand. "I guess this is it. We should split up. I have to grab that jacket, or I'll be booted out of the Academy." She got serious, her face dropping. "I know it doesn't mean much to you, but the Starfighter Academy is my life. It's all I've got."

"You go on. Take one of those ways out you told me about, and I'll follow behind. I have to get that jacket."

She looked out at the milling droids and then back to Lyra. A pair of the droids went down the main path, separating from the main group, leaving three more behind and the two humanoids. Jett assumed they were the owners, or at least in charge of security there.

Nix crept forward, keeping on the balls of her feet, as she prepared to make a break for the jacket. With luck, she could snag in and lead them on a chase. Maybe lose them in the junk yard.

Hopefully by then Lyra would be gone with the gyrocomputer. Nix reached into her pocket and slowly slid a silver throwing dagger from inside. The sliver of metal glinted in the light. She tilted back her arm, ready to snap her throw, but she wasn't aiming for the droids, nor was she aiming for the two figures. She was aiming high. There was a big jutting hydrolic pylon sticking out of the pile. If she was lucky, it would dislodge some junk. If she was unlucky, she would miss entirely. If things went as expected, the pylon would be loud enough to give her a second or two.

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra watched the scene ahead unfold with a tightening knot in her chest, the cluster of droids and the two figures hovering near the jacket representing exactly the kind of complication she had spent the entire trip hoping to avoid. Her grip instinctively tightened around the wrapped gyrocomputer as Nix released her hand, the sudden loss of contact making the cold air of the scrapyard feel much more invasive as Nix began to speak.

When the other girl finally finished, Lyra didn't move or offer a quick retort; instead, she remained rooted to the spot for a heartbeat, her mind already cycling through a dozen different flight paths that all ended in disaster.

Before Nix could take a single step toward the danger, Lyra reached out and gently caught her wrist, her touch firm enough to halt her momentum but soft enough to be a plea rather than a command. Her voice stayed low and steady, modulated with a pilot's practiced calm to ensure it wouldn't carry a centimeter beyond the two of them.

"Would it mean anything at all to you if I said that I truly understood what you're feeling right now?"

She held Nix's gaze for a long moment, allowing the absolute seriousness in her expression to remain unmistakable in the flickering light of the yard.

"Piloting isn't just a career for me. It is my entire life too, so you don't have to explain yourself to me; I get it," she said quietly, her eyes flicking briefly toward the discarded jacket surrounded by the mechanical scavengers before returning to search Nix's face. "That jacket isn't just a piece of weathered cloth to you; it's a tangible piece of who you are, representing your time at the Academy and the future you've been working so hard to reach."

She shifted the weight of the gyrocomputer slightly under her arm, keeping the precious tech protected against her side, yet she no longer looked at it as if the mission mattered more than the person standing beside her in the dark.

"But I have to ask you, what good does recovering a jacket do for me or anyone else if you end up getting taken by those droids while trying to grab it?"

The question hung in the heavy, metallic air for a moment, punctuated only by the distant clanking of machinery. Then, Lyra leaned a little closer, lowering her voice until it was barely a ghost of a whisper against the wind.

"Don't do this alone; let's use both our heads and figure a way through this together."

Her eyes darted back toward the precarious junk piles looming above the path, her internal navigation systems already measuring angles of descent and identifying loose pieces of scrap that could serve as a distraction.

"You've certainly proven that you're exceptionally good at getting yourself into trouble," she added, the faintest hint of a playful, daring grin finally breaking through her professional mask. "But you're about to find out that I'm even better at getting us out of it."

Lyra glanced once more toward the group blocking their exit, her mind already turning over a hundred different possibilities within the twisted maze of metal that surrounded them.

Nixie Voidskipper

 

[Nixie Voidskipper]

Nixie listened to Lyra and calmed down a bit. She nodded. Cooler heads prevailed, and Lyra was right. It would be better if they had a plan and working together they could probably have a better chance of success. "So my idea was to throw this," she pulled a nondescript throwing-knife out of her pants, "at that," she gestured at the precariously buried pylon. "I figured, it'd make enough noise to distract them long enough to run in and grab my jacket."

"Then zoom, get out of there," she gestured with her hands in a pantomime of her on a speeder, escaping the scene -- except there was no speeder. She shrugged her shoulders, "Seemed like a good enough plan."

She grinned slowly, sheepishly, considering the mess that she was in. "I am as good at getting myself out of trouble as I am at dragging other people into it." She said, backing up against a shell of a Fondor Haulcraft that protruded jaggedly into the air.

"Clearly I didn't think all of this through," she rolled her eyes. "Anyway, at worst I figured if they caught me I could escape since I'm new here, and we could meet up later. If you get caught, then it would be both our butts, since we've already been seen together." While she was talking she started pulling the laces out of her boots, and pulled them off. "But since you're still here, I may have a slightly better idea." She pulled the laces so they stuck through just the top loop, the boots, she filled with the heaviest pieces of metal she could find. "We swing these over our heads, and release them both at the same time. The metal will fly everywhere, and we could have a better chance of escape. Then I run in and grab my jacket, and we both get out of here together."

Her eyebrows raised as she tried to sell the idea to Lyra, then she reached out and offered one of the filled boots to Lyra, "At least my boots don't have my name or insignia on them." She smiled finally, fully.

"What do you say to that?"

Lyra Ventor

 

[Lyra Ventor]

Lyra listened to the explanation without interrupting, her blue eyes flicking between the knife, the pylon, and the cluster of droids loitering beyond the exit. It was chaotic and undeniably reckless, but as Nix spoke, the corner of Lyra's mouth began to twitch with a reluctant sort of amusement. It was, surprisingly, not the worst idea she had ever heard.

When Nix started pulling the laces out of her boots to stuff them with scrap metal, Lyra finally let out a quiet, huffed laugh. "You know," she murmured softly, watching the "artillery" take shape, "most pilots I know plan their maneuvers with charts and flight computers. You're out here inventing junkyard ballistics."

She hesitated for only a heartbeat when the boot was offered, taking a second to tuck the wrapped gyrocomputer deeper into her jacket and tighten her tool pouch so nothing would bounce loose during the sprint. Then, she took the improvised weapon. The sheer weight of the scrap metal inside made her eyebrows climb, but she didn't hand it back.

"Alright," she whispered, her gaze locking onto the two figures guarding the exit as she slid her fingers through the lace. She gave the boot a small test swing to measure the momentum. "On my signal. We throw wide in opposite directions. If metal starts raining down over the scrap piles to the right, every sensor in the bay is going to snap that way."

A spark of genuine excitement lit her eyes as she looked back at Nix. "That's your window to grab the jacket. And Nix?" A small, sharp grin cut across her face. "When you start running... don't stop."

Lyra leaned forward, timing the lazy patrol pattern of the droids before she began to swing the boot, once, then twice, letting the weight pull against the lace. With a final, breathy command, she let go.

"Now."

Nixie Voidskipper