Another Day, ANother

[Ilana Logan]

Bellforge
June 2, 2517 - Beaumonde
7:08 AM Local Time
3:36 AM A.S.T

"Dammit!" Ilana shouted as she threw her wrench across the room.

Another whole day is going to be wasted tryin to fix that gorram motor. She decided a few days ago that the best thing to do would be to rebuild it. Took the better part of a day to get it out of the mule and halfway apart, as she was working alone. This morning, the first thing she did was pull the manifold off the other side, to find a hole in the inside, and not a little one either. How did Longstreet expect her to fix this without any new parts with a hole in the motor she could shove her fist through. Hell, she could probably shove his fist through it. Patch tape would work in a pinch, but not for a hole this big, it wasn't made for this sort of work in the first place. All it'd do here is make a bigger mess. All those scrap parts and not one piece she could use to fix the motor. It would have been nice if there'd been a scrap motor in there, or at least parts of one, but that's not Ilana's kind of luck.

She'd fixed a lot of the problems on this mule, but it was far from done. Whoever drove this thing last really did a number on it. There was that hole in the motor, it looked like one of the pistons ran through it. Then there was the control panel, which looked like someone bashed it with a crowbar. She could probably rewire it and fix most of that, but she would new wire for that.

She sighed heavily and said, "Man, I need a drink. Only been here a week and already they've got me doing something utterly hopeless."

She wasn't going to have a drink though. She was going to fix everything on this mule that she had the parts for, then she'd have her drink. She went across the room and picked up her wrench from where it landed. When she bent down, she smacked her head on the corner of the work bench and sank down on her knees.

She rubbed her forehead and pulled it away to look at it. No blood, but damn it smarted. "That's gonna leave a mark," Ilana said, rubbing her forehead again. "That's just what I need, to give the guys here a reason to think I can't do this."

Just as she was getting up, she spotted a square of metal lying behind the work bench. She picked it up and found it was fairly thick, about 1/4 inch, and about one square foot in size. A lightbulb came on in her head just then. It was a dim one, but she thought it was worth a shot. Nothing else around here would be of any use tryin to fix that motor.

She went across the room and got the inside piece with the hole in it. She went back to the bench and laid the motor part and the square of metal on the bench and picked up her cutting torch, and started to work. There was a good chance this wasn't going to work, but she was gonna try. If it didn't. . . hell she'd have to have a new one anyway, its not like she was fixing something that wasn't broke.

[Marcus O'Terra]

Hawkeye

Hawkeye slammed the airlock door shut, locked it and then triple checked the seal, the door was tightly locked, there should be no issues in his densest. Hawkeye watched as the larger ship's docking tube pulled away from his shuttle, another successful pickup. Hawkeye took a glance around his hold, mainly his cargo consisted of a few crates, and then there was the crown jewel, a rather new mule. As the larger ship began to pull away, Hawkeye did a once over of the cargo, making sure everything was strapped down, it could cost him his job if any of the cargo got smashed. When he was absolutely sure his cargo was secure, Hawkeye headed up to his cockpit. Hawkeye sat down in his seat, unholstered his two pistols, removing the belt around his thigh, and placing them in the glove compartment, it was time to begin his lonely dissent to the surface, in fact the hanger to be more specific.

About an hour later the hanger doors were just coming into view. Hawkeye sent a quick message to the hanger, and slowly the doors began to slide open. Hawkeye flew his bird in through the roof. Below the ship warning lights were flashing, to tell the workers to clear the landing strip, Hawkeye only saw one worker down below, but he was still to far up to tell who it was, and he wasn't even sure he'd know them. Hawkeye's ship lighted down in the hanger, and he quickly scurried to open the cargo bay door. "Hey, I have some cargo here I need to unload, also is there anyone her who can sign for the delivery?" Hawkeye said, as he scanned the hanger he noticed, that only one person seemed to be here a girl, if he remembered correctly he'd met her once before, Hawkeye thought she was a mechanic named Ina but he could be wrong, he was still quite new here. "Hey Ina can you come help me with this?"

[Ilana Logan]

Ilana put her cutting torch down and took off the welding hood. The metal piece she found was in place of the hole. She picked up the part and looked it over. It looked like it would hold up. That was just a theory though, the only way to be sure was to test it. That meant making sure the piston that likely went through it wasn't broken, bent, or otherwise damaged, then putting it back together. She picked up her wrench that she threw over here earlier and took the piece across the warehouse to the Mule where she had the motor taken apart. She squatted beside the disassembled motor when the roof of the warehouse opened up the warning lights started flashing.

Ilana set down the wrench and the part, and moved against the wall to stay out of the way. She looked up to see a ship decending into the warehouse. When the ship landed, Ilana stepped away from the wall. The cargo bay opened up and a guy stepped to the doorway and said "Hey, I have some cargo here I need to unload. Also, is there anyone here who can sign for the delivery?"

After a moment, he added, "Hey Ina, can you come help me with this?"

Ilana looked around to make sure she was alone. When she realized she was, and that he had probably just said her name wrong as some people did, she started walking forward. As she got closer, she realized it was Hawkeye. She didn't know him well, in fact she had only met him once, but she was pretty good at putting a name to a face if she'd met them before.
As she got to the cargo bay, she said, "Hawkeye, right? If you need something signed I'll have to get one of the other guys. I can help you unload it though."

[Marcus O'Terra]

Hawkeye

Hawkeye stood there awkwardly for what felt lime hours, just waiting for the girl, Ina he thought her name was to reply, of course it was probably only seconds but being the new guy he always felt like people were looking at him funny, and ordinary things always seemed awkward. When Hawkeye called out to Ina it took her a moment to respond, almost like she didn't know who he was talking to, which made Hawkeye embarrassed, because that meant he probably had gotten her name wrong. Crap what was that girls name. Finally the girl came over and offered to help. "Hey thanks, don't worry about getting it signed now, I just need to give the form to someone who I can trust to get it to the warehouse manager so that he can sign it and give it to my boss, I don't need it now." Hawkeye lead the girl onto his shuttle, and began to untie the cargo. "Here you are, 10 crates of various contents, and a relatively new mule. Oh I'm sorry if I called you by the wrong name."

With two people it took almost no time to unload the cargo, in fact Hawkeye was running a bit ahead of schedule, and that meant he could take a few moments to rest. Hawkeye quickly went into his shuttle and locked it up tight, then once the ship was secure, he headed up to towards the break room. along the way Hawkeye's eye was caught by the project the girl had been working on, it looked like an engine of some sorts but with a rather large patch on it, Hawkeye wasn't sure what type of engine it was, but he sure hoped with a hole that size in it the girl was harvesting parts from it, not trying to make it work again. Of course given the economy of the planet, and the price of motors, there was a good chance that a large company like this couldn't afford to replace every possibly fixable part. "Hey whatchya workin on?" Hawkeye was legitimately curious, he loved flying and piloting, but he'd never really understood the mechanics of how that worked, of course he'd gotten some experience with the workings of machines on Beylix, but that was much more breaking scrap up to be melted down and reused.

[Ilana Logan]

In the cargo hold of Hawkeye's ship, he gave her the form for the shipment, which she tucked into her back pocket, and untied the load. He gave her a list of what was there and apologized for calling her by the wrong name. Point for him, Ilana thought. I didn't think he'd noticed. Outloud she said, "Not a problem, many people do. It's better than 'Hey you,' any day." She smiled at herself as they unloaded the cargo. She'd never been what anyone would call a people person, as she tended to ramble, and it always made her laugh at herself, though she tried to do it on the inside. If you start laughing out loud for no apparent reason, you tend to end up in an Alliance Institution, and nobody wants to go there.

Cargo unloaded, Hawkeye went back to his ship and Ilana walked back to the motor she was working on. She squatted down beside it again and picked up her wrench. She still needed to check those pistons before she put it back together. "Hey whatchya workin on?" Hawkeye said from behind her. She jumped slightly, startled because she didn't hear him approach, but she thought she covered it up as she turned to look up at him.

"Well, this mule here's the biggest pile of junk I've ever worked on. Right now, I'm rebuilding the engine. This part here," Ilana said, picking up the patched part. "Is the interior piece of the main block. It's underneath the manifold. One of the pistons ran right through it. I put this patch on it because I don't have another motor lying around here, and so far no one has got another one for it. It won't hold forever, but it'll work until I can nag these guys into gettin a new one, or at least a used one with no holes." Ilana set the part down, and picked up one of the pistons. Turning to Hawkeye, she said, "This is the piston that ran through the block. Shattered the spring completely off of it. Normally the piston throws the rod off and the rod goes through the block. Ilana put down the piston and picked up one of the rods. This is the rod I was talking about. I still don't know for sure if I'll be able to fix the control panel on it though."

Ilana put the piston down and took a deep breath. She stood up and looked at Hawkeye. "Sorry about that. Not many people ask about this stuff. When they do, I have a tendency to forget where the off button for my mouth is."

[Bishop Morse]

Carl


Carl was having trouble wrapping his mind about what was being told to him. There was a sort of mixture of confusion and anger. How could this be happening? He wasn’t sure, but what he knew that it was his responsibility to get a full idea of what was going on. However it was early in the morning, and a lot of the people weren’t even there yet. Because of that he needed to quickly figure out how he could get some people to head out with him, otherwise he’d have to go on his own. And given what was hearing that was a dangerous sort of thing to be doing. ”Stay there, I’ll be there as soon as I can!” He yelled into his earpiece. He was standing the parlor area of Longstreets office, alone as he’d been watching the cortex. But he couldn’t just sit there. He had gotten up, grabbed his shotgun and charged outside. Turned right at the hallway and was now standing the morning of Beaumonde.

He looked left and right, no one was in the area of use. The large red ship in front of him on the landing pad wasn’t a particularly good place to look, because he might not be able to get through to those inside. Just then off to his right a shuttle was visible coming down into one of the warehouses at the post. That signified people, even if it was one of those who had recently been hired. Carl had a truck parked a few yards away, and he darted over to it. His long hair bounced on his back, and he held his hat down to his head and he charged towards it. The vehicle, a 16 foot long labor vehicle, two wheels at the front, four wheels holding it at the back, and an open roof. He got up into the driver seat, grabbed the control and turned the vehicle on. There was a seat beside him, and two behind him, and a bed. He shifted the controls over in the direction of the warehouse and drove over. The vehicle had a high pitch sort of whine that came out of the engine, common of vehicles like that. The engine noise and the sound of the wheels turning on the ground was audible as it come up towards the warehouse.

The large open door and items inside didn’t stop him from driving the vehicle straight into the warehouse itself. He looked up over the windshield to see who he could. Before him there was a man, one he’d recognized. He knew it was a newly hired man, one that was a pilot. The name didn’t come to his mind, but that was because there were so many that worked the ones that Carl remembered well were the ones that were there for a while. This man wasn’t quite that. He pulled the vehicle off closer to one of the walls of the warehouse, and kept the engine running as he stepped out, shotgun still in hand. As he hopped off the vehicle he noticed a mechanic on the ground working on a mule. This one he knew, her name was Logan. He knew that because the ship parked on the primary landing pad. Either way it didn’t matter ”You two!” He called forward to get their attention. ”Load up, were headin’ out into the town, there’s trouble at hotel.” He announced. The shotgun was still in his right hand, and he had a stern yet rushed expression on his face, signifying the important of his haste.

[Ilana Logan]

Ilana had just finished apologizing to Hawkeye when a large truck came tearing into the warehouse. She turned her head toward the high-pitch screaming that was coming from the overworked engine and suddenly knew how so many people managed to get themselves run over by various vehicles. She stood staring as the truck barreled straight toward her, her mind screaming at her to get out of the way, but her feet may as well have been nailed to the floor for all the good they did her. The truck skid to a stop just far enough away that she didn’t wet herself, for which she was grateful. Even as he threw it into park, the driver was jumping off the truck. It was Carl, and he was carrying a gun, looking more than a little perturbed. Even as she was wondering what could put that look on his face, he spoke.

“You two!” He called out. “Load up, we’re headin’ out into town, there’s trouble at the hotel.”
Ilana turned and grabbed her Lakaron from under the bench beside her work area, the revolver was still safe on her hip. Even as she picked up the rifle, she turned and ran toward the truck, not waiting to see if Hawkeye was following suit. She jumped into the passenger seat of the truck and buckled her safety belt. If Carl drove this thing all the way to the hotel the way he came tearing into the warehouse, she’d be thrown right off the truck on the first turn he made. In the hurry he was in, he probably wouldn’t stop to pick her up either. She looped the rifle's strap over one shoulder and across her chest, and began preparing herself for whatever lay ahead.

[Marcus O'Terra]

Hawkeye

It finally hit Hawkeye the girl's name was Logan, Ilana he thought. While Hawkeye'd been trying to remember her name, Ilana had been chattering on about motors, and Hawkeye'd only heard about half of it. It was quite sweet how she was so enthused about her work, Hawk knew the feeling, back during the war Hawk would have talked for hours about his war exploits, but six years in hiding had taught him to button his lip. Ilana finally cut her self off, not that Hawk minded listening, it was just getting a bit much. That was when Ilana began to get flustered and apologize profusely, which was very entertaining for Hawkeye to watch, in fact he could barely stop himself from laughing.

What was that droning sound, and was it getting louder? Yes Hawkeye was sure the sound was getting louder and he was pretty sure it was a motor. "Hey Ilana it's okay you wern't boring me, I enjoyed hearing about the mechanics of this engine," sadly the sound of the Hawk's voice had been drowned out by the fast approaching sound of a motor. A few seconds later a large truck came screaming into the warehouse, piloted by a maniac in a cowboy hat, in fact Hawkeye had no clue who it was. Hawkeye rested his hand on his knife as the man dismounted brandishing a shotgun. Hawkeye's muscles tensed as he prepared himself for the inevitable fight, or at least that was what he was expecting. Hawkeye was a little anxious he would only have one chance to incapacitate the man, before the shotgun's range gave him the upper hand, oh why had he left his pistols in the shuttle?

“You two!” He called out. “Load up, we’re headin’ out into town, there’s trouble at the hotel.”

Hawkeye relaxed a tick, letting his knife slide back into his belt, and he sprang into action, Hawkeye sprinted over to his ship, unlocked the door, rushed to the cockpit, loaded and strapped on his two revolvers, stuffed some extra ammo in his belt pouch, slipped his coat on, and ran back out slamming his door shut along the way. Hawkeye ran over to the truck, sat down behind Ilana and strapped himself in. "Lets Go!" But it wasn't till the truck was heading full tilt away from the warehouse that he realized that he hadn't locked his shuttle, crap.

[Bishop Morse]

Carl


Carl turned around and started heading back to the truck the moment he’d called them forward. He hopped back up into the drivers seat and waited for them to grab whatever they were going to be bringing. He had absolutely no idea what they should be expecting, but he had his shotgun, as he always did in case he needed it. Rare was the occasion when he had to use it, but if he needed to, he would without an ounce of hesitation. The woman came running down first. She had in her hands a long rifle, one that he’d seen her with before. The thing was old and rusty looking, but so were a lot of things. Looks were deceiving, but that didn’t matter. She likely could get a better weapon without any problems, which led him to believe that there was qualities about it which were making it worth holding on to. As she got on to the truck he looked over to see where the man was.

He didn’t see him, but he saw the shuttle door was open. ”Hurry up dammit.” Carl thought to himself making sure the vehicle was ready to drive off. Then he saw the man return with a coat on. He made the presumption the man at least had a pistol. Most people at the outpost were armed at all times, just as precaution. So once the man came running over he put his foot on the pedal to get ready to move forward. As the man stepped up onto the vehicle Carl was already starting to move forward. He himself never bothered with safety harnesses much. During the war things like that really only seemed useful for keeping people sitting upright once they were dead. He didn’t say anything as the truck turned around and began to head out the way it came, and he had no intention of talking at all during the trip. Carl was a man of relatively few words when he was on the job. When he wasn’t he’d talk, but when was tasked with doing something, especially something like this, he’d keep his focus. The vehicle came about left and down towards the main gate to the outpost. It opened up as the guard at the gate saw him coming, and they rushed out onto the street towards their destination.


Continues in Sunrise on Prospects Unfulfilled.