Nuts and bolts

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

It was a routine cargo drop, just like any number of deliveries to the Sanctuary One colony on Ossus. A bulk freighter landed, detached a quartet of eight-by-thirty-meter cargo pods, and left. One pod was loaded with donated clothes, computers, and school supplies for the growing population of Jedi younglings. One held a pair of armored speeders, in need of repair, and an array of motorized farming equipment bound for the Gossam enclave to the West. A third was weighed down with building supplies and materials to replenish the Alliance and Cizerack construction crews. All three were quickly scanned, opened, and inventoried, and within hours they had been unloaded and hauled away to be picked up by the next freighter.

The fourth pod stayed where it had been dropped, untouched and unopened, well into the afternoon.

---

When Suriyesh Rajinaathra awoke, she was immediately aware of three things, all of them unpleasant: 1) Her alarm clock had upgraded from obnoxious to ear-bleeding, which meant she'd overslept. 2) There was a rotten taste in her mouth, a stale combination of stimcaf and cigarette smoke that she could feel clinging to her pointy teeth. 3) She hadn't groomed last night, and she now had a terminal case of full-body bed-fur. Groaning, she heaved herself up in bed on one arm and found the caudal dexterity to slap her alarm clock with her long, brown tail. Then she slid out of bed onto unsteady, bare feet, dragged the back of her paw across her bleary, pink eyes, and stumbled off toward the sonic shower attached to her tiny studio living quarters.

As she peeled off the bra and boxers she'd slept in, she heard a plaintive warble from over her shoulder. "Morning, Rix," she mumbled. "Hey, what's the idea of letting me sleep in so long? I got work to do this morning."

R1-X1 scooted in from the shop on his monopod and spun his black, bullet-shaped carapace to wag a sensor probe disapprovingly at his mistress, chittering like an irate mother squirrel. Suri laughed and stepped into the cleansing stream of ions. "Yeah, I was up late. Elbie-nine's holosensors needed recalibrating, and unless you suddenly learned how to climb ladders, that's my job. Gotta make a good first impression on the wizard-knights, after all."

The Munjan mongoose combed her chestnut brown fur furiously with her claws to coax out the static cling while Rix continued to admonish her. "Of course I'm rested up. No thanks to you. Gar, what's the local time, anyway? We gotta be landing soon, right? Wait, what do you mean you tried getting me up?"

Rix wheedled apologetically, and Suri slapped the kill switch on the sonic shower. "We already landed?" Another warble. "Hours ago? Krath!"

Suri bolted out of the shower, fur still fluffed from the discharge, and yanked on a fresh set of underwear. Then she reached over to the charging cradle at the foot of her bed, seized the cybernetic arm that rested there, and slotted it expertly into the servomechanical port in her left shoulder socket.

"All right, we've got to get the Elbies booted up and on-site for inspection. Oh, shakah, Eight's still got a bad ankle servo, hasn't he? Well, two out of three, plus Sev should be good."

She pulled on a clean tanktop and half her coveralls and blew by Rix, who was still chattering on about something, and swatted the noses of three DUM-series pit droids on a shelf as she passed. The little metal homunculi unfolded, dropped off their perches, and stumbled into each other as they shook off the digital cobwebs.

"Up and at 'em, boys, there's work to be done!" Suri swept into the shop and smacked the overhead lights, illuminating a long, narrow warehouse that looked more than anything like the inside of a Jawa sandcrawler: droid parts in boxes and on shelves stacked clear to the ceiling, multiple workbenches with projects in progress, whether patients in for repair or lost causes being cannibalized for spare components, and an ad-hoc network of cranes, pulleys on tracks, and suspension cables that crisscrossed the ceiling. Dominating the center of the space were three massive, three-meter-tall LB-series bulk loading droids, relics from the old Sith War, whatever that was. All Suri knew was they were ancient but rugged. She'd bought them for a song, and the merchant thought he was ripping her off, when all they needed for a second - or perhaps one-hundred-and-second - lease on life was a little elbow grease and Munjan ingenuity.

"Right, Rix, no time for preliminary checks, we need to get these bots on their feet. You boot up Seven, I'll get Nine going--What?"

Exasperated, Rix repeated what he'd just bleeped. Suriyesh blinked back, dumbfounded.

"It's Tuesday? You mean we're actually early?"

Rix whistled an affirmative while the Pit droids gathered at Suri's feet like dogs looking for table scraps. The mongoose sighed and rubbed at the bridge of her muzzle to chase away an oncoming migraine.

"Right. I'm stepping out to have a smoke."

She stooped to pull up one of the massive bay doors in the side of the cargo pod and instantly regretted it - the light from Ossus's sun was about ten times brighter than she was prepared for, but she stumbled out into it and felt for the pack of stims in the back pocket of her coveralls. She stuck the stim in her teeth and cradled it against the breeze as she lit up. Then she leaned back against the wall of her droid shop to settle herself into a better frame of mind.

[Kazahan]

"Yeah. A cargo container. It's been sitting there all day. Someone knows what's in it, but it's not been moved, or opened, or anything."

Kazahan perked up from his frustrating perusal of spare parts and technological gagdetry the Gossam trader had on display.

"Surrplus and odds and ends from Miwù Shanmà," the loosely garbed reptile had croaked with a smile that put the Trianii on edge.

Building a lightsaber had been much, much more difficult for him than he'd expected. He had thought to be wielding one, and possibly on his way to being Grandmaster of the Jedi by now. But almost a month after starting, he was still searching for the parts he needed, but he was beginning to think he wasn't going to be much good at mechanics or repair, unless it pertained to weapons, or unless the Force was like magic and he could find a spell for that. Setting the loose wiring he was looking at on the Gossam's stand, he decided to forgo continuing to hurt his brain and instead sate his curiosity.

The trip to the pod was short, given his long-gaited stride, but upon arriving and seeing the rather bland pod for himself, he was forced to admit that it wasn't at all as interesting as he'd hoped it would be. He circled the pod and wondered where the scanner and display were. He began to sniff and prod at different parts of the container, and pressed his ears to the metal to find if he could hear anything within; he hissed and pulled back when the hot metal nearly singed his ear fur. He prowled around it, and began digging into the Force to see if he could find something there, when the side of the pod drew up on noisy hydraulic rollers.

The suddenness of the event caught Kazahan by surprise, and he stumbled back, tailing sticking straight out behind him and fur standing up in all directions. Kazahan, who was to the side of the pod, calmed and curiously stuck his head around to catch sight of a creature he'd seen before on Ossus, but with a name he'd never remembered. Three pit droids gamboled in the pod behind her, and Kazahan's eyes followed them, his tail flicking curiously. His eyes drank in the droids and parts, and then they widened. Surely this place would have the parts he needed for his lightsaber!

He glanced back over to the... what was it... Nerenite? Hapenni? He shook his head and decided to greet the newcomer. Maybe it would tell him what it was called. Nodding to himself, he set out on the course he'd just plotted.

"Hello," he said, only then realizing only his head was visible around the corner of the pod. Oh well.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"Ai!"

Suri threw herself backward but only succeeded in banging her head against the wall of the cargo container, and her stim went spinning into the dirt at her feet. There was a sand tiger prowling around the corner. And it had just talked.

The mongoose flattened herself against the wall and edged toward the door, thinking of the plasma torch she'd left clamped to a workbench. "Um," she said, "hello."

Two of the pit droids peeked around the lip of the cargo door. The third ventured out around Suri's legs, inched forward, and shook a tiny, metal fist at the interloper.

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

"What jiss thjiss?"

As her crews attended to the dispensation of their own incoming cargo, Major Verratoa frowned at the sight of a lone cargo container sitting on the tarmac. Sloppy, she groused. Didn't these forrda know anything about properly clearing a staging area? One of her attending sergeants looked at the ship manifest, shaking her head.

"Therre'ss no jinforrmatjion on thjiss pod, rrou'a."

Verratoa frowned, her right hand tightening into a fist.

"Rreturrn to basse, Sserrgeant. jI wjill get to the bottom of thjiss."

As the Jaanni'saari sergeant led her contingent of troops to load up the Cizeri cargo pod onto a repulsor sled, Verratoa stormed towards the cargo pod to check it out personally. She then noticed the hatch was open, and headed for a pair of aliens that seemed to be more or less loafing about the aperture.

[Kazahan]

Kazahan either didn't notice or ignored it's discomfort at his greeting, and walked around the corner to get a better view of the technology inside.

"Makka's bones!" he said, taking in all of the wizardry for a moment before facing the small... Bertantine? "This one is Kazahan. A bright moon shines upon our meeting."

Even as he was finishing his greeting, he was looking at the little pit droids curiously, though he found himself greatly amused, and wondering if it would mind if he crouched and batted it around for a bit. A second later, he was wondering what much of the things in the pod were, and he was barely able to restrain himself from just walking in and touching everything.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

"What? But it's..." Suriyesh gawped at him, then squinted up into the scalding-bright sky. "It's the middle of the day."

She watched in mounting disbelief as the two-meter cat came stalking toward her pit droids on two legs. Animals on two legs! What next?

What was next was that he was leaning into the entrance to her shop, eyes dilating in the dark like a mongoose in a snake butcher's. Swallowing her fear, Suri darted in front of him and spread her arms wide, one natural, the other not, like a mother bear protecting her den.

"Woah, hey hey hey hey. Where do you think you're heading?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Major Verratoa walked into the midst of an apparent ruckus. She shouldn't be surprised. Nothing on Ossus seemed to run smoothly, after all. The Cizeri officer frowned as she stepped into the cargo pod's threshold, removing her military sun-blockers from her eyes as she cleared her throat noisily.

[Kazahan]

He glanced down at the little thing blocking his path and settled back, frowning slightly.

"This one —"

But he was interrupted by another voice that cleared its throat and he turned, still looking down, at an even smaller thing. At least he knew it was called a Cizerack.

"Yes?" he asked, tempted to crouch a bit so as to look it in the eye. "Can this one help with anything?"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri turned again - Gar, just five minutes out of bed, and she was starting to get dizzy - to face the lesser of two felines. Well, in size, at least, and in felininity... felinitude... catness. She carried herself far bigger than her height and wore a practiced look of strained patience, like she was containing a shitstorm of epic proportions only because she found the ensuing paperwork inconvenient. Suri had worked with those types before, and she didn't relish the prospect of facing one without the benefit of having finished even one gods-damned smoke.

"Well, you look official," she said, hesitant. "Am I supposed to check in with you? Suriyesh Rajinaathra, droid specialist. I was expecting to start Wednesday, but it looks like I'm here early. Wait, do you even have a seven-day week here? Never mind, that's not important. Anyway, I sent my work visa on ahead, so everything should be in order. Would you like a tour?"

The pit droids scurried back into the safety of the cargo pod out of poking range of either of the two strange felines, while Rix trundled up behind Suri in case she needed support. He scanned Verratoa up and down and trilled nervously.

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Verratoa looked up at the towering alien. One of the cousin races - Trianii if she were to guess - he was even a bit taller than most Cizeri men. Still, if the only thing you respected was height, then you were less than a fool.

"jYou can clearr thjiss carrgo pod frrom the sstagjing arrea jimmedjiateljy." Her scarred face looked past the much larger felinoid, unto an unkempt droid pen. The shorter alien, an augment by the look of her, then stepped forward. Ah, she'd had it wrong, then. This was the one she needed to talk to.

Her bobbed right ear flicked. Suriyesh Rajinaathra. The name probably should sound familiar, but all alien names sounded alike to her.

"jYourr jimmjigrratjion sstatuss doess not concerrn me. Take that up wjith the Jedji."

Verratoa paced, finding a berthed droid in a wall socket. She swiped a finger over its metal chassis, frowning at the smudge of grease that carried with her.

[Kazahan]

Kazahan spent the next few moments silent while he listened to both the small things talk. He'd ignored the little Cizerack's order, not out of a sense of pride or spite, but his attention had wandered and he hadn't heard it.

"Suriyesh Rajinaathra, droid specialist."

Kazahan's attention wandered then to trying to pronounce Suriyesh Rajinaathra. Out loud, though still quietly. He found it difficult, and immediately proceeded to murmuring possible alternatives.

"Yesh? No, no, that is not good at all," he murmured. "Riyesh? Maybe, maybe, though ending on aspirants is awkward for Kazahan."

He looked up at the ceiling of the pod, one clawed finger tapping his bottom lip.

"Raj?" He grinned, and blinked. "Raji?"

He turned to ask the little thing if she minded if he called her Raji, but then he heard something that made him happy.

"jYourr jimmjigrratjion sstatuss doess not concerrn me. Take that up wjith the Jedji."

"Jedi? Kazahan is a Jedi!" he said enthusiastically. "What can this one do for you?"

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri looked up again at the sand tiger who'd spent the past minute mumbling different phonetic permutations of her name. "You're a Jedi?" she said, tilting one ear back. "Oh. Fantastic. Look, um..."

The mongoose paused with one mechanical finger in the air, realizing the uniformed woman hadn't yet introduced herself. Rix chimed in with a musical pattern of staccato pips and squeaks.

"Major Verratoa of the Cizerack construction force," Suri filled in, "I just got dropped off here. This cargo container isn't getting broken down. It's my home, my office, and my shop. You want me to move it..." She pivoted her hips to look back at her Ord-Mantell-in-a-box existence. "I can do that. But you're going to have to give me a few minutes, all right?"

She spun on one footpaw and shrugged on the shoulder straps of her coveralls. "Come on, Rix, let's wake up the Elbies. Jeb, Zu, get aboard. Kaz, watch the company, will you?"

Two of the pit droids leapt to her bionic arm and climbed up her shoulders like monkeys while the third tottered backward, trying to keep both Kazahan and Verratoa in view. Meanwhile Suri and Rix ambled back toward two of the three enormous blue-and-gold construction droids, nearly as wide as they were tall, secured to the ceiling and floor by heavy-duty chains and tensioned pulleys like monstrous titans of myth.

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

"Jedi? Kazahan is a Jedi!"

Major Verratoa looked again to the tall alien, mild incredulity on her expression. Of course you are.

"What can this one do for you?"

"Nothjing."

Verratoa glanced to the augment, already hard at work at freeing her load-bearing droids from their harnesses.

"Mjisss Rrajjinaathrra..."

The Major paused, making a sour face at how the name tripped and fell off her tongue awkwardly. Alien nonsense.

"...jinqujirred asss to herr jimmjigrratjion sstatuss. jIs therre a prrocesss? Do jyou even have one?"

The Jedi seemed perfectly suited for sitting around cross-legged and making rocks float, but she was yet to be convinced there was a bureaucratic soul on this planet that didn't have a Cizeri accent. She was distinctly aware of a human expression for organized chaos - herding cats. Her tail tuft puffed at the ridiculousness of such a thing. Cats, of course, knew exactly where they were going, and what they were doing.

[Kazahan]

While the little woman had been speaking, Kazahan had offered to place the little pit droid on his shoulders, feeling pity for its smallness. It clambered up and perched on his shoulder precariously gripping his thicker neck fur with mechanical digits.

"Of course there's a process for immigration!" Kazahan said, blinking. He moved as he spoke, causing the little pit droid to bob and hold on desperately. It looked like it was nodding along with him. "This is it."

He turned and called out to Raji, "The Jedi welcome you to Ossus, Suriyesh Rajinaathra!"

He turned back, inwardly laughing; this was one of the few times he was glad his face couldn't reveal his emotions so easily to non Force users. The little Cizerack might not appreciate the joke, but that was part of the joke in the first place. It wasn't how the process went, but the Trianii didn't know it, and he wasn't going to tell the funny little Cizerack that. What was her name again? It didn't matter.

He'd take Raji to find Loki or Zem or Anbira (yes, he thought, probably Anbira) or Serena later and get herself all worked out in the system. He'd help as much as he could, because her little droids looked like they'd be a lot of fun to play with.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh had nimbly scaled the side of LB7 and was freeing the joint locks that had been battened down for travel. Meanwhile the two little pit droids, Jeb and Zu, ran across the construction droid's bulky shoulders and set about loosing the chains that moored it in place. They slithered to the floor in heaps, or up to the pulleys overhead. Then Jeb held on to the wrong chain and rose squealing from his perch into the rafters.

Suri paused with a with her prosthetic arm elbow-deep in LB7's massive shoulder joint. "Oh, cheers, Kazahan. Immigration should always be so easy. Anyway--"

She wrestled a particularly stiff joint into place and then went crawling like a furry spider to the other shoulder. She paused to rescue a dangling Jeb from the tackle overhead and went back to work.

"Like I said, you already have my work visa, and you're the ones who hired me, so shouldn't be any problems on that end. Should've got my inventory, too, and my requisitions list. I've got supplies for two weeks' operations, but that's going to run out, and I can only work miracles for so long. Also going to need an industrial-grade power link to charge my systems, and disposal for scrap and waste oil. How are we looking, Rix?"

The torpedo-shaped R1 unit tittered affirmatively as he worked the console at the LB-units' feet. Systems checks and power levels were all in acceptable norms, even if "acceptable" had to be stretched to accommodate three-thousand-year-old hardware. Suriyesh shimmied along the chains to LB9 with the pit droids in hot pursuit.

"Then it's a matter of finding out whoever's in charge of the build sites, and setting up a work rota for my droids. And they are my droids, I own the lot free and clear, and I know their tolerances, so I won't have them overworked like some common ASP-series scrapheaps. So..."

She kicked away the last of the mooring chains and gave Rix a thumbs-up, who burbled happily and sent a COMMIT command through his console. With a sound like ancient jet turbines spooling up, the two huge construction droids came to life, flexing fingers the size of people and venting stale air from their pistons with a mighty hiss, and lurched forward over the shop floor with footsteps that rattled the whole pod. Suri was in her glory, grinning ear to ear as she lounged on LB9's prodigious blue shoulder.

"Let's move mountains, shall we?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Verratoa's only reply to Kazahan was a nonplussed, thin-lipped expression as she crossed her arms. It wasn't her problem anyway. If they wanted to extend open arms to any rover and vagabond that stumbled their way to Ossus, it was their planet to ruin as they saw fit.

The energetic Nehantite talked as she worked, and the Major was just about to mention that the one she needed to liaise with regarding site construction was her, when the two heavy lifter droids activated in unison, causing a resounding din in the enclosed shipping pod that threatened to overwhelm her. Hands to her ears, the Jaanni'saari officer scampered out of the way to allow the massive droids clearance to pass, lest she end up as a stain on the floor.

[Kazahan]

While the Cizerack female scurried away, Kazahan merely stood there, drinking in the huge mechanical monstrosities that lumbered toward him. His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open, and his ears tilted forward.

"Kazahan wants to ride too!" He shouted, his tail flicking in excitement. The pit droid on his shoulder was now clinging to the back of his head, but since nothing was in his eyes, ears, or mouth, he was fine with it.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri looked down to see Kazahan wearing Kaz as a hat - the two were a natural team, it seemed - and grinned even more brightly as her opinion of the sand tiger man ratcheted up a few notches. "Why not?" she said. "Just keep your tail away from the joints. I learned that the hard way. Seven, give him a hand!"

The other LB loader stretched out a steam-shovel-sized hand for Kazahan, offering him an easy climb onto its shoulders. The Trianii would be just as trivial a burden for the massive machine as the pit droid was for Kazahan.

"Right, forward march, you two. Docking positions, either side of the crate."

As the LBs thundered out the pod doors onto the tarmac, Suriyesh spotted Major Verratoa standing well away from the cargo pod with a particularly agitated twitch in her tail. "Sorry about that!" she shouted over the grinding servos. "So, where are we moving to, chief?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

As violent an action as it was, Major Verratoa was a little impressed with the can-do immediacy of the Nehantite's actions. No filing requests for a move order. No waiting for industrial hoversleds. Just taking matters into her own (droids' enormous durasteel) hands.

"The rroad norrth!" She shouted over the din, her ears still twitching to escape the brunt of the noise. "Carrefulljy! Therre jiss trraffjic and pedesstrrjianss!"

This was probably a bad idea, but it was a bad idea to which they were already committed. The Cizeri Major stormed ahead, pulling Kazahan by the arm roughly.

"jYou, Jedji! Come wjith me and keep the wajy clearr!"

[Kazahan]

"But... but..." the Trianii gave a last despairing glance at the behemoth droids and allowed the little Cizerack to pull him away. The pit droid sitting precariously now atop his head patted him sympathetically.

He followed the overbearing little Cizerack, but made a promise to himself.

One day, soon, he was going to ride one of those titanic machines.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh offered Kazahan a conciliatory shrug as her LB lumbered to the front of the crate, and the other took position at the back, and she shifted in her perch on LB9's shoulders as the massive droid faced the forward docking port and clamped onto it with both hands. A dull CL-CLUNK echoed from the far end to let her know that LB7 had hitched up as well, and she scurried up onto the corrugated roof of her shop. The heat was blistering up there in the direct sun with the metal radiating it back all around her, but she reveled in it. It reminded her of home.

The brownfur checked clearance around the pod and was pleased to see that, while she'd attracted a fair number of curious onlookers, everyone was staying well back. They were mostly workers or Gossam vendors, salt of the land types who could appreciate a little street theater. All the better - Suriyesh wanted them to see her droids in action. It was the best advertising she could have asked for.

"All right Rix," she said into the radio on her left lapel, "take the helm. Into the air, nice and easy."

Inside the shop, R1-X1 had jacked into a wireless port that allowed him to slave both LB loaders to his own control matrix. With Rix synchronizing their actions, the LBs braced against the pod and, with a tremendous groaning and knocking of metal, slowly lifted the entire 30-meter structure into the air without so much as a hydrospanner falling out of place inside.

Once they were up, Suri scampered to the leading edge of the crate and looked down at Verratoa and Kazahan. "Lead the way, chief!"

With the Cizerack and Trianii clearing the way, the LBs lifted alternating legs and slid into motion with an astounding degree of grace. Imperial AT-ATs wished they were as stable on four mechanical legs as two LB loaders and a hyperspace shipping container.

Satisfied that everything was working smoothly, Suriyesh shimmied down LB9's back and dropped nimbly to the ground. She easily caught up with Major Verratoa, tail snapping in excitement.

"So how's the build progressing?" she asked. "Think there'll be a place for my boys?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

"Get back, jyou."

Verratoa brusquely prodded away a human who had ignored previous demands to clear the lane and was instead rubbernecking. She pushed him along, giving one of his colleagues a look that stated in no uncertain terms that she should also make way. She turned, snapping her fingers at an Ishi Tib pushing a hoversled.

"Clearr out! Don't jyou have ejyess?" she hissed, her eyes turning to Suri as she caught up with the vanguard leading the moving operation. Small talk with the droid tinkerer was unavoidable, it would seem, as the heavy lifter droids were strong, but not particularly fast.

"We arre behjind sschedule." If it was possible, the Major's stormy disposition managed to darken even more. "The Alljiance jiss known forr manjy thjingss. Effjicjiencjy jiss not one of them. Werre thjiss camp adjudjicated exclussjiveljy bjy a Cizerack admjinjisstrratorr, we would not be crrjippled bjy ssuch endemjic dawdljing."

As if on cue, Kazahan seemed to provide a very effective example of Verratoa's frustrations. While he was at the forefront, he spent more time gazing with wonderment at the droids than he did actually making sure the path was respected.

"We arre not on holjidajy, Trrjianjii!"

A pair of Twileks thought about crossing the road up ahead, and a mere glance from the diminuitive Cizerack officer froze them where they stood. Keeping up pace, Verratoa spoke to Suri again.

"jIf jyou do qualjitjy worrk, we majy have usse forr jyou. jI expect harrd worrkerrss, forrda."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh suddenly stiffened mid-stride and arched an eyebrow at Major Verratoa. "What did you just call me?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

Verratoa waved a hand dismissively. "Ourr worrd forr a forrejignerr orr aljien. jI do not know jyourr sspecjiess."

And she didn't particularly care to get a narrative in any real detail. The hirsute creature could speak basic, had work skills, and wasn't urinating or defecating in the street like a pack animal. That was good enough, more or less. The Major wasn't interested in making friends.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri had certainly been called worse, but she'd gripped the short end of the sociological stick often enough to know how marginalization crept up on a person. She held her tone and expression as steady as she could manage, feeling empowered by the roughly six hundred tonnes of materiel walking at her whim down the road behind her.

"Well, even so, I've got a title, and that's Specialist, and I've got a name, and that's Suriyesh," she said. "If you can't pronounce that, we'll work something out, just so we've got something to distinguish me from all the other forrdas running around. More efficient that way, you know."

[Kazahan]

"How about Raji?" the Trianii asked, stepping closer to them. "And don't listen to her too much. This is not a Cizerack planet, so her authority is limited outside of her established grounds. Is that not so?"

He continued on, his eyes returning to the huge droids with a shining wonderment. The pit droid was now perched on his left shoulder, kicking its legs like a child. Kazahan didn't seem to notice it, or care.

"The Jedi have many plans, you see. Plans within plans within plans. Very convoluted, so Kazahan doesn't pay them much attention. But some are interesting. Excavation at the ruins of the big city nearby, guard posts and holidays at the Gossam settlement..." he paused, trying to fit the words through his mouth, "Miwù Shanmà."

The Trianii Jedi bounced lightly on his footpaws — massive appendages that they were — with little sound that could be heard above the din of the droids.

"Missions and assignments to other worlds!" Kazahan's facial expressions may have been hard to read, but the excitement in his voice was easily heard. "Though this one expects to be going home mostly. Some adventure, however, is always good to be having, yes?"

[T'yeellaa Meorrrei]

"Sspecjialjisst wjill do fjine." Verratoa gave the barest of nods in deference to the Nehantite's defensive bristling. Keeping professional was likely the best course of action. Her supplication was doubled when the Trianii closed in, white-knighting the furry augment in an annoying fashion. Yes, he was very annoying. Nevertheless...

"Ourr authorrjitjy herre ljiess jin sserrvjice to jyou, Massterr Jedji." The Major replied almost sweetly, a nearly uncomfortable kindness from someone not used to offering many kindnesses at all. Her scarred face almost seemed to strain at a polite smile. Fortunately, the Trianii bounded on, rambling about this and that and allowing gravity to once again take hold of the corners of Verratoa's mouth.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Raji? Well, it was an odd choice, but it was derived from her name. If the sand tiger (Kazahan the Jedi, she mentally amended, just to stave off the insidious creep of speciesist hypocrisy) wanted to call her that, she wouldn't put up a fuss. Anyway, Kaz the pit droid had taken a liking to him, and she'd come to trust their judgment when it came to character, if never in anything else.

"Excavations?" she said. "I've got a couple 11-17 mole miners (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/11-17-series_mining_droid) that just need a bit of fixing up to put 'em back on their treads. And if you want sentries, nothing better than a G-2RD (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/G-2RD_series_guard_droid) or Hound-W2 (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hound-W2_SPD_security_droid) to keep you company late at night and track up to one thousand and twenty-four heat sources in a radius of two kilometers. I haven't got anything that runs armed, but then, you're the ones with the laser swords, aren't you?"

Suriyesh reached into the pocket of her coveralls and freed another stim and another strike-anywhere match, which she struck against her bionic wrist. In the work of seconds she had it lit and puffing between her teeth.

"In a couple of days, you're all going to wonder how you ever got by without a droid specialist around. And that's not a boast, that's a promise. Either of you want a smoke?"

[Kazahan]

"Hmm," Kazahan 'hmmed' as he looked curiously at the stick Raji held between her teeth, inhaling in the smoke and puffing it back out. He nodded, and was handed one. He held it carefully, and sniffed it, noting a thick, somewhat sweet smelling aroma. It reminded him of the clan chiefs, and the shamans and priests who had penchants for smoking pipes. He'd never seen these sorts of pipes before though. "That is true. A good service it is, too. Very orderly. And organized."

He glanced up, and saw that Raji was holding out a match to him. He carefully placed the paper pipe between his lips and aping her previous action, struck it on her bionic arm — he was very curious about that; even though Trianii weren't undeveloped technologically, many things the galaxy had they did not, simply due to cultural and religious strictures — held it up to the pipe, and inhaled deeply. He coughed lightly, the smoke acrid and drier than the stuff the shamans loaded their wooden pipes with. It also wafted up and tickled his nose, blanketing his sense of smell with the pervading scent of smoke.

He sneezed, blinking rapidly and shaking his head. He held the thing and watched it burn before taking another breath from it, and dealt with that one much better.

"Thank you," he said finally, coughing as the smoke scratched his throat.

[Untaaura Verratoa]

The first wisps of smoke across her nose already had her mouth watering. Dirty habit, but eventually all ground-pounders smoked. Or at least they did after they'd been shot at enough. During the Second Thalassian Sieges, Verratoa had gotten up to a pack a day, but ducking artillery would do that to anyone. These days, the worst she had to deal with was boarding pirate ships, and she'd since trimmed that back to a respectable half pack. So it was understood that she made sure a fresh pack was always loaded into her left breast pocket, and the smoker's golden rule was that you never accepted what you could produce yourself. Verratoa nodded a wordless understanding as her own pack was produced. A stim was plucked by dextrous lips, and lit from a metallic-red field issue pen lighter she had rammed into the side of the pack.

"jI brrought sserrvjice drrojidss wjith mjy own garrrjisson," She began stand-offishly, exhaling purple smoke that began to take the edge off ever-frayed nerves. "but jI would be jinterressted to ssee what jyou can do, sspecjialjisst."

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suriyesh nimbly pushed her stim to the corner of her mouth and said, "Aha, you brought them, but do you keep 'em happy? Regular tune-ups? Oil baths? Logic games to keep the circuits young? They're not just machines, you know."

[Untaaura Verratoa]

Untaaura gave Suri a sidelong, nearly-horrified expression as the furry augment nearly bubbled over herself in her personifications. Carefully diverting her eyes for fear that she too might contract crazy from the droid-lover, the Major gave her stim a few quick introverted puffs as she stared at the ground a few paces in front of her.

"Of courrsse. What wass jI thjinkjing."

Hopefully the specialist's technical aptitude was more sound than her sanity.

[Suriyesh Rajinaathra]

Suri grinned unapologetically at the skeptic Cizerack.

"Take a look behind you, Major," she said. "Those Elbies? They've got a service record of over a thousand years. I bought 'em off a junk vendor who didn't have a clue what they were, fixed 'em up, flushed their joints, ran every diagnostic I could think of. Everything checked out, every system worked, but they wouldn't move. Just stood there like statues. And you know why?"

The mongoose took a long, leisurely drag before relieving the major, who, obviously, didn't know why.

"They were a set of three. The junker was parting out the third. He was nothing but a torso sitting on blocks in his back room. I bought him, brought him home, and Elbie-Seven and Nine here, they came to life and carried him into my workshop. They just wanted their brother back. Sure, I could've wiped their memory. Started from scratch. And lost a thousand years of experience and rapport in the process. You want the most out of your droids, you've got to understand them. Other machines wear out with age. Droids appreciate."

[Kazahan]

Kazahan was, truthfully, as lost as a day old kitten five inches from its mother's teat. Droids and machinery and gadgetry were not his specialty at all, and he found himself simply trying to find something he could grasp onto in the conversation. The result was as inevitable as a newborn kitten trying to walk; it simply wasn't happening.

So, his attention was wandering, and he only paid enough attention to the two small females as needed to make sure he wasn't heading in the wrong direction or pulling too far ahead. Soon even that was gone, and he paid most of his mind to the quirky little droid perched on his shoulder. At some point, it had gone from sitting to laying, its arms and legs dangling loosely down his chest and back, while its single eye studied him. He studied it back now, and lifted one clawed hand and tapped the glass on its eye. The droid reciprocated with a slight tug on one of his whiskers, which gave him the most curious sensation of being about to sneeze. He wiggled his nose and tried to ignore it, while the droid's 'hand' went to his chin and tapped it a few times.

"You are most curious," he said, enjoying himself. "More like a pet than a machine."

[Untaaura Verratoa]

"jIt ssoundss ljike an errrorr jin prrogrrammjing" Verratoa said, though without confidence and not at all certain how much she wanted to argue the point with the passionate alien. Next she would be extolling the efficiency bonuses when robots fell in love. Nonsense! Fortunately they were at last arriving at the vacant lot the Major intended to parcel off on the Nehantite, and with a gruff nod she exhaled smoke, gesturing curtly with the ash of her cigarette.

"jYourr plot, sspecjialjisst."

Verratoa stepped aside, noting with a frown that the Jedi Trianii had devolved into self-absorbed uselessness, fawning over the pit droid he'd taken a shine to.

"Massterr Jedji...pleasse do trrjy and not get trrampled."