LOCATION: Haidoral Prime

"Crink!" Kit shouted as she felt the shock travel down her arm. After nearly three weeks of trying to modify a wrecked data pad, she was about ready to throw it against the wall of her cramped room. Standing up abruptly, Kit instead tossed it onto her bunk and turned on her heel.

Take a break and look at it with fresh eyes later, she told herself.

There was work waiting for her downstairs that might actually result in real money. The data pad was something she had found while delivering a compressor valve across town. Seeing it tossed in the trash with a cracked screen and picking it up had been a whim, mostly to take nit apart and put back together. Data pads weren't hard to come by in the mid-rim, but even so, she was months away from saving up enough credits to buy one of her own. The wages refurbishing ship parts were barely enough to get by, and if she wanted to be a slicer for the Rebellion, she was going to need to start practicing as soon as possible.

"Most of those who have joined up are even younger than me!" Kit had pointed out to Adson a few nights ago at dinner.

"That makes sense," Adson responded between bites of his carb ration.

"Really?" she asked, surprised that he agreed with her. Maybe he's starting to understand.

"Yeah," he continued, "Anyone with a fully developed brain would be too dumb, so they have to get them young."

Kit sighed, "They're trying to fix the galaxy. They want to make things better and fair for people like us."

Adson tossed her the last bite of his ration, a tradition from years ago, before standing up. He was on his way out the door when he turned around and answered her the same way he always did, "The Rebellion, the Empire, it doesn't matter. They all want the same thing: power. They can spin their fairy tale all they want, at the end of the day, the only difference between the Empire and the Rebellion is that the Empire pays better."

Kit knew Adson was jaded. The two of them had been fighting most of their lives just to feed themselves. Adson had tried to join up with the empire as a mechanic when he turned 18, but they'd rejected him. Kit knew better than to try to figure out why. All she knew was that he had come back six months after he left, without a job, and with more pessimism.

Adson was the best mechanic this side of the Colonies, and the Empire was insane for turning him away. She planned to join up too and then the two of them could work together on the core planets, or even better, on a starship. Mechanics were always in demand and they'd fixed every type of ship in the galaxy. But once the Empire wasn't an option for Adson, she figured they should try for the Rebellion. Certainly rebel ships broke down once in awhile too.

Leaving the blinking screen of the data pad behind, Kit followed the stairs down to the rec room of the Opulent that she and Adson had been calling home for years. The Opulent HK-600 had been a nightmare to fly. The company almost went bankrupt after they released it. Most of them were returned to stock, but a few crashed spectacularly before the recall happened. One happened to crash on Hairdoral Prime with little damage to the actual hull, but the engine had caught on fire and scared off all the passengers. By the time Adson had found it, it had been abandoned for months. It would never fly again, and even if it could, to do so would be a deathwish. It made the perfect home base though. It was far enough from the surrounding settlements that they were left alone, but close enough that they could find work regularly.

Sitting in the middle of the cargo bay toward the back of the ship, Kit saw Adson scrubbing grime off of a convertor. There were four more sparkling next to him, recently shined. He didn't look up from his work when she came in, but offered a quick nod.

"Power converters? Isn't that a little below your pay grade?" Kit teased.

"Well, my lowly subordinate usually does it, but she was upstairs playing slicer, so…"

Kit frowned, "I'm not playing. In case you forgot, the only time we've made more than 1000 credits on one job in the last year was thanks to me 'playing splicer' with a box of comlinks."

Rolling his eyes, Adson countered, "How could I forget? You remind me every day."

Kit sat down and picked up the nearest converter. She turned it over in her hands and was comforted by the weight. Ever since she was young, she loved the idea of engines. You could pick up one part and it was essentially useless on its own, but get enough of the right parts in the right places, and you could fly your way into a whole new life.

"You make any progress on that thing?" he pointed his thumb up the stairs toward the bunks. Kit shook her head.

"You'll figure it out. You always do."

Kit didn't respond, and just turned the metal over in her hand again.

"What's on your mind?" Adson inquired, putting down a power converter that looked as good as new, despite the 4 years of grime it was caked in an hour ago.

"There's nothing wrong with being a mechanic," Kit said. He raised an eyebrow and she continued, "I like it. I like seeing how things work. I like working with you."

Adson smiled, "What's not to like?"

"Putting together a ship makes sense. Each part goes where it belongs and then it works."

"Unless you get it wrong, then the ship crashes and everyone dies," Adson dryly corrected her.

Kit was trying to stay serious, but the corners of her mouth turned up, "Okay. Either way, you see it. You see pistons moving and pressure changing and fuel depleting. There is something about data pads and comlinks and droids. The work, but you can't just look at them and figure it out. You have to really dig in."

Adson tossed all the parts into one box and stood up to carry it out to their speeder. Kit followed, wondering if she had said something to make him upset. After loading up their cargo, he turned to her and confessed, "I've only ever been good at this. I can fix broken things, maybe even make them work a little better. You've got something different in you, don't be content with scrubbing spare parts and outfitting freighters with new fuel tanks your whole life."

"It wouldn't be the worst thing, to be like you."

"Kid, you were never like me. That is exactly what got my attention about you in the first place."