[Hux]

The woman speaking to Hux continued, "Is Finn okay?"

He raised his head. "Finn?" He'd heard the name Poe had used, but wasn't sure if that was a public name or something private between the two of them, like Poe calling him, 'Babe'. They'd escaped the Finalizer together when Poe had been taken prisoner over Jakku, so Hux assumed there was a relationship there of some kind.

"The former stormtrooper I was with on the Supremacy." There was an edge to her voice. A couple of the stormtroopers shifted, their blasters swinging to point somewhere near her feet because people weren't supposed to speak to him that way. She ignored them. "The one you were going to execute with me."

"Oh. Yes. The traitor. He's fine." He tried to go back to his thoughts on the power system.

"His name is Finn."

Hux made an exasperated noise because yes, he'd gathered from the way she was talking that he was allowed to call FN-2187 that and was probably supposed to. He wasn't that dense to social cues, though perhaps she was if she was. "And he is a traitor. Yes, I caught that part. Stop interrupting me! This is important."

"I'm not interrupting you!" she said with outrage. "All you're doing is standing there."

Finn came out from the forward compartment and looked around. "What's going on?"

"He keeps calling you a traitor instead of using your name."

"I'm stating a fact!" Hux said.

Finn addressed him. "Well, I could start calling you other stuff, too. Hugs."

"I'm not mocking your name! I never did!" Though he was now declining to use the name because he was being insulting and FN-2187 was a traitor. But in any case, he'd now completely lost track of his earlier musings on the power system and needed to start over. The milling crowd made him hesitate. At least the stormtroopers were behaving themselves. Their weapons were at loose ready, waiting for the command to act.

Ren came out of the forward compartment, moving Finn aside, which meant Hux had to move or make contact with the man. The ship was not made to carry this many people. Ren looked around with a scowl. "What's going on?"

Hux barely contained himself from growling about Ren coming in and asking the exact same question as Finn. The door slid shut behind him, meaning that Poe and the woman-dressed-as-a-colonel would probably come out to repeat the pattern even further.

"All I was asking is what happened," said the persistently annoying smaller woman. Come to think of it, he'd ordered the execution of all three of these people – her, Finn, and Ren. It was a shame none of them were dead yet. There was still time to arrange something. He had a firing squad on hand, after all. He assessed the room and took a few steps to the side.

FN-2187 (or Finn, he supposed) glanced around and followed him, sticking close. It meant the firing lines were messed up. Which on second thought, was probably why Finn was stuck to his ass all of a sudden. He'd been an exemplary cadet and an officer candidate, Hux recalled. But again, he was letting himself be distracted from the important issue. Hux pinched the bridge of his nose and moved aft. Most of the linkages he needed were there. Finn followed on his heels. Hux didn't object. It was probably suicidal to attack Ren in any case.

Ren explained to the others, "We took a direct hit just as we went into hyperspace. It overloaded the shields and changed our vector from the programmed route. A gravity well pulled us out and we crashed. I can't tell anything else right now. There's plant life."

"Is the atmosphere breathable?" she asked.

"Asinine question," Hux muttered. "How would he know with the sensors out?" Louder, he said, "You, alien. Off. Go over there." He gestured sharply for the creature to move aside.

To his surprise, it sunk thick fingers into the fabric of his tunic and lifted him right off the floor. It was just as strong as it looked. "I do not follow orders from-"

Hux had a knife out in a second and Finn hanging unhelpfully on his arm a second later.

"No! No!" Finn pushed on the alien, who released its grip, dropping Hux to the floor where he stumbled with Finn's weight still pulling at him. Hux whipped his arm free of Finn's interference once he had his feet again. Finn wedged himself directly between the two, a hand out toward each of them, acting oblivious to the fact that Hux was perfectly willing to cut him down as well. "Stop. Stop."

The compartment was suddenly quiet. Hux glanced around. All the stormtrooper blasters were pointed in their direction, but no one had fired, probably due to close proximity. He looked back to Finn. Interestingly, he noted, Finn didn't think Hux would stab him. More fool he, but at the moment Finn was a useful buffer.

Calmly, he said to Finn, "If we do not restore power soon, we will all find out the hard way if the outside atmosphere can support us. The air inside is already getting stuffy without circulation. Move off the floor panel. The equipment I need to access is under it."

The alien said angrily, "You could have said that instead of being impolite!"

"I would argue with you, but you're not worth it," Hux snapped back, arguing with it anyway.

"What did you say?" The brute shook a fist at him even though he was perfectly intelligible and also right there if the creature wanted to make things physical again. Finn was still between them, making Hux glad he hadn't stabbed him. Hux put away his knife to demonstrate how little the thing's bleating concerned him. The troopers shifted, blasters pointing at the floor now.

Finn stepped off the panel with his hands raised in conciliation at the alien. They moved to the side, with the alien complaining to Finn, "Poe can say that man is in charge, but no one else agreed with this. He consulted no one. It does not count."

Finn's response was perfect logic for the First Order: "Someone has to be in charge. He has the stormtroopers. The only way this works is if it's him."

Hux went to his knees and pried up the panel. Moving it was a job better suited to two people. He was surprised when the smaller woman took the other side and helped him prop it up. She knelt on the opposite side of the opening. "What do we got?"

He was uncertain of her intent, then decided to treat her as a fellow engineer. He said, "The ship has plenty of power. It's just not on. Ren mentioned we lost a wing. Whatever did that must have torn the linkages."

"So the plug's been pulled," she said. "We're looking for loose components."

"Exactly." Hux reached in, grabbing things and giving them a shake to see if they were loose.

"What is that there?" she asked, pointing. "Is that flash-char?"

He could hardly see it in the dim compartment, but he moved what she was referencing anyway. The component was limned with black on the panel under it. "So this overloaded. The break must be down-current from here."

"That would be … this way." She pointed the direction. He knew that perfectly well, but didn't say anything. He just checked the next module in line. She reached down and rattled the conduit beyond that. "This shouldn't be loose," she said. "It's along this cable. Do you have a repair kit?"

"Aft."

"I'll get it." That was from Finn, who moved past them and through the hatch to the rear compartment. He had finished talking to the alien, who was now glowering at Hux but saying nothing. The Wookiee was standing next to it, similarly silent.

He turned back to business. The woman had leaned forward and down, getting her head into the opening in the floor and following the conduit. She looked unbalanced, since she was 'uphill' on the ship and leaning down, whereas Hux was 'downhill' and better situated. Hux put a careful hand on her shoulder. At the touch, she stopped and looked up at him. He said, "I'll brace you in case you fall."

"Oh." She looked at his hand again, then leaned back in, letting him support her. "What I really need is a light."

He turned to one of the troopers. "Survival kit. Get a light." With his free hand, he pointed at the space under a console. "They should be in one of those cabinets."

Finn was back with the repair kit at the same time as the trooper handed Hux a light. In a moment, he and the woman were on the floor with tools, both their heads poked into the ship's innards as they followed the cabling. They had to pull up another panel. The Wookiee moved when the woman asked it nicely – and it was indeed named Chewbacca; Hux kept his mouth shut this time. They found where the shearing off of the wing had yanked the central power couplings out of alignment. A single adjustment later and a pleasing, subtle background hum told him they had power again. The air freshened moments after that.

The woman said, "If we end up going somewhere, we'll need to properly terminate that instead of just isolating the damage."

"I agree, but, 'if'," Hux said. "We don't have welding gear, so let's see what the rest of the damage is before we try to techit. That overloaded panel goes to the shields. We might be able to get them back if we can replace whatever burned out."

"Okay," she said. "What's 'techit'?"

He looked at her blankly, because it was like asking what the shields were. "When a technician is assigned to repair something that can't be repaired." There was a wealth of background he didn't know how to quickly convey about a class structure that privileged the military and required, at threat of death, obedience and success from the technician class. It meant getting an impossible order like that could be a death sentence for insubordination. Which led to … some really inventive 'repairs' at times. (And at other times, fragging.) "It's, ah, to repair something with insufficient resources. To make do."

"Oh. Okay. I'm used to doing that in the Resistance."

He gave her a small, genuine smile, because he severely doubted she'd had to work under the conditions the Order imposed on its people. "We may yet have need of those skills."