A/N: Technician class conducts themselves a little differently from the Army and Navy – fewer 'sirs', more relaxed, more focused on getting the job done than on looking right while doing it.

The First Order is, by the way, a stratocracy, which is distinguished from a military dictatorship or junta in that the rule by military officers is built into their articles of government and legal system. Also built into their articles of government (in my version in these stories) is the intention of transferring control back to a properly elected, legitimate galactic government once they have one to do it to. The original idea was that this would be the reformed Empire, but since Hux refused to play emperor, it reverted back to the Old Republic. They do not recognize the New Republic as a legitimate government.

You know how sometimes when you're watching a show, you just wish they had a scene where the characters talked to each other like normal people and weren't constantly in the middle of high drama? Well, that's this chapter.

"Dinner is served," Hux said, preceding a couple droids stacked with food service trays. The core of the engineering team was crowded into a room they'd labeled 'Central'. Not much of a name, but it worked. This was the command center for the staging work going on for Starkiller (a better name, although Hux would have preferred they called the planet that and not him), located in one of the prefabricated bases they'd had delivered by Boxbea. Staging at this point meant building the framework that would enclose and brace the excavated areas as digging continued.

"Oh, good! Food," said Jarkame. He was the group's primary astrophysicist. He and the other five members turned to retrieve their trays. They worked late most evenings. (Of course, there wasn't much else they could do, but having a clear goal and a lack of interfering management seemed to be doing wonders for focus and productivity.) Hux had found they were no different than nerfs in that all he had to do was show up with food often enough and they loved him. As long as the project stayed on track, he loved them right back. At least as much as the nerfs did.

Cheskar asked Hux, "Did you drop by the Droiders earlier? How are they doing?"

"Yes, I did. They're doing well," Hux said, settling in off to the side with his cup of taurine tea and a few biscuits. He'd already eaten dinner with the group who managed the progress of the self-replicating construction droids. "Digging continues. They remain excited about the kyber traces they've been able to refine from the tailings. Whatever vein they hit last month has played out until they go deeper. But we're sticking to the plan. It's excavation first and foremost. Mining is secondary. We're trying to pull up the next farium shipment. The droids are finding less of it than expected and need to be supplemented.

"It will be a while before they find crystals of any size. That they're already finding industrially significant gleanings is impressive, even if it was concentrated in a vein. They're seeing evidence of voids in that area – caves, but deeper in. I'm interested to see how that turns out." He had a strange, restless itch about it that didn't make much sense. It was like something was calling to him there. It made him feel weird and he'd had enough of weird feelings in his life lately. "It might be rather scenic before we hollow it all out."

Hux waved at the screens set up along two walls. They showed an interconnecting lattice of metal struts which had been coming together over the last week. The actual struts were parked at an inclined orbit, being worked by droids and bots. "How is the staging coming along?"

"Oh! Show him the gap!" Fabica said. She and Saycor were the 'putting things together' engineers.

"We were just looking at this section," Cheskar said, moving back to the controls. He zoomed in on a place where two struts were slightly askew from one another. "The droids brought it to our attention."

"I thought it was just a perspective thing," Fabica said.

Saycor nodded. "Then we were looking at the other angles, but it's still there."

"Like here." Cheskar flipped through three other viewing angles from different camera pickups. "See, there it is. So Allcasa suggested a spacer, but that's going to redistribute the pressure and even though this is doonium," they leaned forward and zoomed in on a portion, then stood to point, "I really don't want to find out what happens when the weight of half a planet gets concentrated on one link."

Allcasa said, "The material properties will change once we start channeling phantom energy, anyway. We don't have a lot of precedent for how it will work."

Saycor said, "Even if a spacer wouldn't shear, we still need to know what's causing the misalignment."

"Right," Cheskar said. "So Fabica is going to double-check the schematics and we have a bot going out there right now to take some measurements."

Fabica said, "I'll check after I eat."

Jarkame nodded. "Yep, gotta eat. Thanks, boss," he looked over at Hux.

Hux nodded to him. "Anything to keep the legions at work." To Cheskar he said, "What sort of measurements? Is it even the right strut?"

"I'm pretty sure it is," Cheskar said. Other than claiming a tray, they had so far ignored their food. "We've already checked and the ID marks match up. That's why I sent out a bot. I'm thinking it could be warped. Or there could be something about the join down on the other end. Once the bot's there, we'll get a closer look."

"The fasteners could have been over-tightened," Saycor said. "But if that happened here, then it's happened everywhere-"

Fabica put in, "Or it could have happened everywhere. We can't be sure. Maybe just this one spot."

"Maybe, maybe not. Doesn't matter." Saycor continued, "Even if it happened in only one spot, the only way we'll be sure it didn't happen anywhere else is to disassemble, recalibrate, and reassemble."

Hux put a hand on his forehead and wiped it down his face. "How much time would that take? You're most of the way done. These bracing structures go in at the end of next week. If they don't, then the droids can't continue digging."

"Well, they could, but not without risk of collapse," Fabica said.

Hux drew in a breath to address that, but Lanlisa, the physicist, jumped in to beat him to it. "It would be stupid to risk that. We can't just hope the planet's crust holds up. For a narrow channel it might work, but not the way they're doing it. That's why we're building these braces. The crust doesn't cohere."

"I wasn't saying we should keep digging," Fabica said. "I was just … pointing it out."

"We should keep our options open, yes," Hux said mildly, glad the group was self-policing. It saved him from having to step in and squash bad ideas. To Cheskar, he asked, "You said you thought it might be warped. How does doonium get warped? You said that was as strong as we could get that was available for purchase like this."

Cheskar shrugged. "Made wrong to start with. In the star forge. If it's wrong there, it's wrong."

"Can it be fixed?"

"No. That's the thing about doonium. You make it, that's what you've got. That's why they make starships out of the stuff. Crash into a bloody planet and your ship's hull is fine." They laughed a little. "Planet's hosed. And you might be paste inside the ship. But the hull's good. I'm not absolutely sure a spacer wouldn't hold up."

"I am familiar with crash data, yes." Hux sighed. "If this one strut is made wrong, what are the chances there are others made wrong from the same batch?"

"High. They wouldn't have messed up just one."

"So," Hux said, "To sum up - if the fasteners were overtightened it means a complete tear-down because the same droids that did these fasteners did the rest, and they're all suspect then. If it's the strut itself, then we have to examine all of them and it probably won't be just the one. If by chance it is just this individual piece, then we can't fix it anyway." This was not pleasing. All the repercussions of this were not pleasing. But none of it was anyone's fault as far as he could tell. Hux yelled about a lot of things. This was not one of them. "Do we have replacements?"

"Not until the next shipment arrives, two weeks from now. Remember, we cut all the corners to take only exactly what we needed, put together as a kit. That way we'd have it early rather than waiting for them to do a full run on every piece."

"But they're making the other kits," Hux said. "We're going to assemble … what was it, forty-eight of these? Maybe we can rob what we need from a future shipment and have them double-up at some point."

"Yeah, forty-eight is the number. This is the first one." Cheskar turned at a noise from Jarkame. He was pointing at the structure on the screen. Cheskar said, "There's that bot we sent out." It was moving into position at one end of the beam.

Hux said, "We need to be thinking about other options and not let our thinking get boxed in."

"That's why I mentioned the spacer," Allcasa said.

"Are there other solutions?" Hux asked. "Are there ways we can re-check our assumptions?"

Cheskar looked over their shoulder at Hux. "You walked in on the middle of us trying to figure it out, so, you know, that's what we're doing." Their tone was a little exasperated. They turned back as numbers and text began to scroll up.

"I see." Hux accepted the polite rebuke and let the person do their job.

Cheskar said, "The beam's true. At least according to the bot."

"So it's not warped?" Hux asked. He knew he ought to keep his mouth shut and let his people work, but if he'd happened to walk in on something that was going to shut them down for weeks, he wanted to know right away.

Cheskar shook their head. "Nope. Not warped. Right length. Right strut. Right place."

"Check the join angle," Fabica suggested.

"We should back out the fasteners," Saycor said.

"We shouldn't touch the fasteners until we know what we're dealing with," Fabica said back. "They might be fine."

Hux stayed quiet while they bickered. He nibbled tensely on his last biscuit. Cheskar reported, "Angle of contact at the bottom join is within tolerance. But …" They enlarged the video feed from the bot.

"That's not flush," Fabica said, stating the obvious.

Saycor said, "What's that thing in there?"

They all leaned forward. Cheskar pressed a few buttons. The bot extended an arm that had an illuminator on the end, giving them a better view.

"It's a rock," said Lanlisa.

"There's a rock wedged in there," Allcasa echoed.

Jarkame said, "How did a rock get in there? It's out in the middle of empty space! It's a sterile environment. Why is that there? I checked it. I scrubbed it. How much debris is out there?"

Allcasa said, "Jarkame, calm down. Maybe it's not a rock. It just looks like one."

"It's definitely a foreign object," Cheskar said, maneuvering the bot.

Hux said, "Could it have been on the strut to start with?" They looked at him. "Like something picked up as contamination during shipping or unloading? Those freighters aren't clean. I've seen them myself."

Cheskar sent the bot to the opposite side, giving them a different view. Saycor said, "The compression force of those fasteners would have collapsed most minerals. That's not just a space chunk."

"No," Fabica said, "you're right. I'll bet that's a chunk of packing separator. It's compressed, though. See the layers?"

"Uh-huh," Cheskar said, pulling over their dinner. "I see it. Matter settled. Time to eat."

Saycor said, "So we'll back out the fasteners, clean that up, and reconnect. Then on with the show."

Fabica nodded. "I don't need to check the schematics after all."

"No," Cheskar said, "but we do need to change our inspection process. Someone should have caught that before the droids started in."

Fabica agreed. "I'll do that."

"I'll put together the commands for the assembly droids to tear down that section, get that packing peanut out of there, and put it back together." Saycor pushed away his finished tray and moved to a workstation to get started.

Hux sipped the last of his tea. "Such excitement. All's well that ends well."