The Lady Knight

Chapter 5

Lt. Shneya reported to her Repair Supervisor just before knock-off on the last day before the repair-in-air, as ordered. She stood in front of his desk at a casual parade rest and looked down at him with a smile.

Lieutenant Commander Shorkey leaned back in his chair to finish a conversation with his boss, the Repair Manager, sitting in the desk next to his own. The voices of the Gold Group's five management team members sounded in rattling orders and questions on the commlinks, comm ports and with several more bodies in the room. Kess ignored the usual hubbub that never quieted in the managers' office and simply watched LC Shorkey with a knowing grin.

When his conversation with the Repair Manager was over, he smiled back at her and leaned into his desk. "I had nothing to do with this, you know?"

"You still don't know who I'm supposed to report to, do you?"

"Yes, I do," Shorkey admitted. He got up only so he could sit on the corner of his desk. "I found out yesterday, but I still don't know how long you'll be gone. The one-to-four month guess was all they could give me. Is Korbosi all set?"

"She is as set as she's going to get if I'm leaving in the morning." There was no more time for training, but Kess knew Kayla's abilities better than Shorkey did. She was confident the Lieutenant Junior Grade could handle the responsibility of three birds. "She'll be fine."

Shorkey nodded in trust and picked up one of many datapads off his desk. With tightened lips, he reviewed it and then handed it to her. "Here's the top priority list of repairs to be completed. You will also be performing a few things here and there per orders of the Captain, but as long as you get that list done, you'll be all right. Most of the repairs are just reworking some haphazard modifications, so there will be more engineering skills at work rather than troubleshooting."

Kess reviewed the list as he spoke. It was a short list, but all the items on it were big. "Rewire the navicomputer?" she read with raised eyebrows. "Are you kidding me?"

Shorkey smiled, "It's a privately-owned Corellian freighter, but the Captain is in the service of the Alliance in some political fashion or another. Repair what you can in hyperspace and tend to the rest at the final destination while the passengers tend to their business."

Commander Tolgray, a man with which she rarely had a direct conversation, stood up from his desk and stepped to Kess's side, "You were requested by name for this job." He told her firmly, "Don't disappoint them and you won't disappoint me."

"Yes, sir." She responded in a small voice and watched him walk away. She pulled her nervous eyes from the GCs back to look again at Shorkey, "Don't disappoint who?"

Shorkey paused before answering. "This is a chance to show your colors, Kess. I know you can do it, but you have to be your absolute best on this trip."

A frown creased her forehead. "Don't disappoint who?"

Shorkey gave Kess a meaningful look. "Report to Pad 14 at zero five hundred. Captain Solo of the Millennium Falcon."

All conversation in the room dribbled to a stop. The managers' office went deathly quiet. They stared at him as if they hadn't heard him right. Since Commander Tolgray knew already, he watched Kess out of the corner of his eye for her reaction.

Kess was, for a moment, in a standing coma.

Shorkey cracked a grin. He knew this was a heavy assignment. Any repair engineer in the Alliance that held pride with their reputation would jump at the chance to work on the Falcon. Other engineers who were just here for the dental plan would collapse under the magnitude of work.

Kess's throat went dry as she imagined the Captain's face in person after seeing dozens of pictures of him on the vid. She gulped hard at the thought. Few engineers were allowed to touch the Falcon, much less do a repair-in-air. And out of the blue, she just met Commander Skywalker by coincidence?

Kess wondered how she could have been handpicked if she'd never met the Falcon's Captain before. There was no reason why Solo would know who she was. She shook her head at Shorkey, "This doesn't make any sense."

"It's the Falcon. It never makes any sense." He shoved to his feet and turned away, "I guess I'll see you in four months."

The girly girls descended upon the Mash Pit every week and, as the military's working class, blended in with all the other regular customers every time. Neon lights warped the color of the low-lit overheads. Upbeat music bopped from the jukebox but the tiny dance floor lay empty in front of a long bar. The dining room was decorated in deep reds and wood colors from the tattered, flowery carpet to the paper and cardboard menus with the prices edited by ink pen. The place looked like an urban hunting lodge. For LtJG Kayla Korbosi, it was.

Kayla's forwardness sometimes made Kess a little uneasy. Kayla used to try to hook Kess up with one guy or another until Kess put a stop to the blind dates with a threat upon Kayla's life. Now Kayla's tactic was to drag Kess with her to talk to a pair of men at the bar, a pair of men on the dance floor, a pair of men in the elevator. . . .

Upon entry, Kess brown eyes searched the restaurant and felt victorious when the two women sat down at a table in the back. No pair of men in attendance tonight. Kess was safe. They ordered four ales and one large patzia and, by the time the holographic waiter flickered away, Yana and Joanne were hurrying through the door.

Joanne slid into the chair across from Kess and looked at her with wide eyes, "You are a fool!"

Yana quietly sat down next to her and smiled, "I'm not sure if I got the story quite right. What exactly did you say to him again?"

Kess pursed her lips in embarrassment, "I said, 'How dare you use the Force against an unarmed person.'"

Joanne slapped an open hand over her eyes. "You moron."

Kayla licked her painted lips. "Now, Kess honey," she teased, "I thought I taught you better than that."

Kess grabbed the first mug of ale that hit the table. She took a long slow swig to try to numb the beating she was about to get from her friends. She shouldn't have told them about that line. They would never let her live it down.

Kayla saved the day, sort of, by changing the subject. "So! They're here. Now are you going to tell us what this trip is all about?"

Kess grinned and met their glances as her friends sipped full mugs. "First of all, I'd like to mention the reason they pulled a Floor Supervisor for it was because I was asked for by name."

Yana shrugged, "Yeah, okay. So what?"

Kess sighed and grinned wider, "I'm reporting to Captain Solo of the Millennium Falcon."

Yana's brows shot up, "Really?"

Joanne chuckled, "You're in for it now, girly girl!"

Kayla furrowed her brow and leaned over to Kess, "You are joking, right?" Yana and Joanne weren't engineers, so they didn't understand the weight of the job as Kayla did.

"No," Kess assured, "I'm not kidding. I'd like to know, though, how in a black hole could he have asked for me by name if I've never met him before."

"You met Skywalker. Those two are pals." Joanne offered an explanation. "Maybe the Jedi wants to get to know you better." Her brows jumped up and down suggestively.

Yana shrugged, "He said you weren't unarmed after all. Maybe he thinks you're Force-sensitive."

Joanne chuckled, "Right. He's going to pick out the first possible apprentice that insults him and freezes up when she talks to him."

Kayla looked oddly mature to consider that. "No, we heard about the trip last week, she only met Skywalker last night."

Kess listened to the evidence being put on the table, "I doubt Skywalker is even going on the trip. The Falcon isn't a taxi for him and the Councilor. Besides, the three of them have hardly been in the same place at the same time since the Bakuran Treaty."

Joanne leaned in on her elbows, "You can't discount the possibility that he will be there. Look at the bright side, Kess. You've always wanted to meet him and you did. You've always wanted to work on the Falcon and you're going to."

Yana continued with a quiet, sneaky voice, before pouring more ale into her mouth, "She's always wanted to be a Jedi. . . . "

Kess shot her a look. "That's enough. I'll find out if he's going tomorrow. Right now, it doesn't matter. And if he is going, then—

Yana sputtered her words. "You'll just have to find a way to suck up to him."

Kayla angled her head. "How do you suck up to a Jedi without him figuring it out?"

Kess let out a groan as her friends giggled at her. Not only did she have an extremely important and very broken ship to fix and an overbearing, non-military Captain to report to, she had to be ready to deal with a princess politician and maybe also The Jedi, of whom she insulted, for four long months. Kess took another long swig of her beer.

"You'll be fine," Joanne assured. "If he went dark side on you about the remark, he would've just killed you on the spot."

Yana grinned, "Just keep your mouth shut and you'll be okay."

"You guys are really a lot of help." Kess told them and shook her head. The patzia slid onto the table between them and three hands went for a piece of the pie.

Kayla held back and squinted at her beer in deep thought. "I wonder if he uses the Force during sex."

Yana snickered as she bit at her patzia. Joanne burst out in a hearty laughter. Kess hid embarrassed eyes with her hand.

Kayla's eyes twinkled at her friend, "Ask him for me, will you?"

"I will not." Kess's eyes turned hard on the girl even though she knew Kayla was joking. "But thanks for your support."

"Good morning," said the syrupy polite voice of the computerized alarm. "It is zero four hundred."

Kess didn't move from her dead position on the single-wide bed. She heard the alarm. That sickeningly sweet voice was set just loud enough to be annoying. Kess was simply ignoring it, but the alarm wouldn't be ignored.

"Good morning," it repeated. "It is zero four zero one. You have people to impress today."

Kess grinned into her pillow. She liked having an alarm she could program. She opened her eyes just a crack and waited for the next line she programmed the alarm to say.

"Good morning. It is zero four zero two. You have people to impress today. So get your lazy butt out of bed."

She chuckled into her pillow and rolled over. Blinking the sleep from her eyes, she stared up at the ceiling thinking about The Millennium Falcon.

The Smuggler. The Princess. The Jedi.

The magnitude. The responsibility. The visibility.

"Good morning-"

"All right already!" Kess yelled, trying to interrupt the alarm. She jumped out of bed and hit the switch. The computers sickening voice went silent.

Chilly morning air bit at her cheeks as Kess walked to the next complex beyond her own workplace. Streetlights were still on regardless of the orange in the eastern sky. Kess saw only three speeders on the road during her six blocks worth of pedestrian commute.

She walked into the front gateway and moved quickly to the travel way. The shops in the pad core were just starting to open. A small diner serving hot cups and pastries bustled with all of three customers; it was the most people Kess saw all morning.

The layout of the complexes was exact so Kess already knew the way to Pad 14, the same route she would have taken to Pad 4. Other than the layout, however, nothing was the same. Instead of Y-wings and small transports, Kess walked by X-wings and more X-wings. Pads 11 through 13 were chock full with nothing but X-wings. When she walked under the archway to Pad 14, she found even more X-wings and one very dirty, very broken, Corellian Freighter.

The ramp was down and the power conduit hummed through the early morning silence. Upon approaching the looming craft, she saw no bodies and heard no voices. Piles of equipment stood ten metres from the ramp. She noticed it was all second-rate stuff. The labels of a variety of Group and Division symbols meant she got whatever the Alliance had to spare, and probably not all she needed. She sighed down at the equipment and heard the sound of metal tapping on metal, servos whirring back and forth. Kess turned to find a shiny gold protocol droid stepping down the unlit ramp.

"Good morning," she greeted the droid with a smile, happy to see that she didn't get up at 0400 for nothing.

The droid looked at her in surprise. "Good morning. I am C-3PO, human-cyborg relations."

Kess gave him her full attention, "Lieutenant Kess Shneya, reporting as ordered."

The droid's proper accent grew happier. "You are the repair engineer assigned to the Millennium Falcon for our pending trip, are you not?"

"Yes, I am. Is the Captain aboard? I need to report in."

"I'm afraid not, Lieutenant. Captain Solo has not yet arrived. However, they should be here any moment. Chewbacca is on board at this time. You may report to him while we wait."

"Is he the First Officer?" Kess asked, glancing up the ramp and seeing nothing.

"Yes, Lieutenant."

"Thank you." She nodded sharply to dismiss the droid and headed for the ramp. Kess had enough experience with protocol droids to know that they tended to ramble if you let them. It was just one of many little tidbits she learned while working at a droid repair shop during secondary school. As a result, most people didn't treat droids the way she did. Besides cutting off a rambler mid-sentence, she treated droids with the same respect as everyone else. Kess was a repair engineer down to her blood. Droids were people too.

She winced to get a closer look at the craft. There were blast shots still un-repaired on its dirty gray hull. Bulkhead panels were completely missing from the circular passageway. Rounding the slow corner towards the cockpit, she stopped when a horrifying sight caught her eye.

One of lower side panels was missing to reveal the botched circuitry inside. Components were spliced into a charred circuit to the point of looking like a three-dimensional honeycomb for a bee with no taste in architecture. The circuit was so badly jury-rigged, in fact, that Kess could not recognize what kind of circuit it was. She dismissed the worry with a blink, turned, and bumped face-first into a furry wall that was not there a moment ago.

A soft growl sounded. Kess stepped back to lift her eyes to the source, and her eyes just kept going up and up, until finally finding the Wookiee's face as he growled again.

Kess gulped.

C-3PO's voice spoke behind her, "Lieutenant, if I may introduce you to Chewbacca, First Officer of the Millennium Falcon."

Kess could barely get her squeaky voice above a whisper, "Lt. Shneya, reporting for duty, sir."

The large creature started a series of hoots and growls in different tones and Kess realized he was talking.

"He says that he would like you to bring your equipment on board as quickly as possible. He says you should store it in the port side of the cargo bay."

Kess had to gulp again, "Yes, sir. Uh, which way to the cargo bay?"

Chewbacca gave her a condescending look and started to walk away. She adjusted the giant duffel bag over her shoulder before following him around the passageway and into the largest open space in the back of the ship.

Chewbacca stepped around some more into the main bay motioning her to follow, then he whipped an arm towards an empty bunk for her to drop her bag.

Moving back around to the ramp to retrieve the first load, Kess stopped her boots in the main bay. She found it hard to believe the famous couple was willing to travel in such rugged quarters. Equipment cabinets towered the room, a well-used holograph table took up a corner and, in the cubby across from that, huddled greasy galley, smaller than the one in her barracks room. The engineering station had only one stock chair but another mismatched chair was bolted to the deck beside it. Right before the port side passageway sat a dark blue, fluffy couch a half-metre too short for humans.

Trying not to curl her nose at the lack of comfort in the main bay, her home for the next one-to-four months, she turned back to the passageway and went for the first load.