Outpost Odin

--- Part 2 ---

by

FM/COL TK-7764/Chaos 3-2/Wing XIX/SSD Avenger

TYR/KAP TK-7764/Prophecy/Qel-Droma/Arcona

            There was a different feel to this place then anywhere else on the ship.  It was the same on every Star Destroyer, even an Executor class like the Avenger.  The hanger bay was the one place where military order and discipline seemed to be tossed aside.  Stormtroopers walked the corridors in regular, predicable patterns.  Gunners performed maintenance every seventy-five minutes.  In the computer core, the droids running it were constantly moving in a precise, processing and moving the stored information.  In the dressing rooms, TIE Fighter pilot’s packs were weighed to make sure they did not weigh more the maximum weight of sixty-five kilograms.  Yet in a hanger, especially now that the main hanger had been damaged, things were always hectic.  Flight schedules were never on time.  There was always some delay on a patrol route or mechanical failure on one of the older ships like the Cygnus Star Wings.  People constantly ran around and the flight deck officer and flight controller’s jobs continued to look less appealing to any recruit.

 

The first thing TK noticed when he entered the hanger was the smell.  The rest of a Star Destroyer smelled sterile.  The air had been recycled hundreds of thousands of time since the ship had been commissioned.  Every bit of organic particle that might have once existed in the air was gone.  A ship like this was immaculate.  All that was here was plastic and metal.  It was not that way in a hanger bay.  Here there was the constant hum of the magfield that was holding atmosphere.  TK was sure it ionized or singed the air somehow.  TK was not sure what the smell was.  He was just sure that it was different.  Maybe it was the oil stains or the fuel cells.  Maybe it was the smoldering battle scars on some wounded ships’ hulls.  Maybe it was just the fact that the hangers were the largest open space rooms on the ship.  Or more likely, maybe it was the fact that this was a place where hundreds of pilots got into tight fitting flight suits and got put into tiny little cockpits for about seven hours straight.  The smell of a pilot after a long recon mission was enough to swear off it all.  Whoever said women liked a man in uniform was obviously not referring to a TIE pilot flight suit.  Like he said, TK was not sure what the smell was.  All he knew for sure was that two months after the ship had been commissioned, the cleaning droids had given up all hope and now left this place alone.

 

The rear secondary hanger was usually never this crowded.  Now that the main hanger bay had been damaged, most of squadrons of the Avenger had been assigned over here.  Usually, only a few squads were here at a time.  TK could tell that the newly appointed chief deck officer, his predecessor had been killed, was racking his brain trying to work everything out.  Usually, the Avenger’s bombers used the secondary hanger.  The torpedo and rocket reloading systems took up a lot of space.  The other ships typically stored here were ships that did not fit on TIE racks.  Thus, all of the ships transports and shuttles were crammed into this hanger.  Tau squadron’s A-9 Vigilances would be here whenever the Grand Master was aboard.  Furthermore, any nonmilitary ships were kept here.  Thus the battle group commander’s TIE Praetor and other personal ships were here.  TK’s personal ship, which he has owned since he was seventeen, was always held here.  TK muttered to himself as he noticed that it had been moved to accommodate the flood of fighters.  Now his ship was way in the back hanger, as opposed to its normal spot, which was just in the back of the hanger.  Just more of a walk, he thought.  TK got enough exercise just walking around this ship.  The stupid turbolift that got him to the dinning hall from his squadron’s living quarters was broken half the time.

 

As TK walked along, he wondered how many of the pilots really knew him.  Had he been forgotten that much in this past year?  Most of the pilots here barely gave him a second glance.  He was famous in name only.  After the Subjugator had been sent to the docks, there had been a bit of hostility between the two groups of pilots.  Slowly though, everyone had started to get along.  TK passed by one squadron that was preparing to launch.  He recognized the squadron patch immediately.  TK-7764 wondered if the members of Fury knew about their common bond.  Most people know TK as a loyal member of Wing XX and as somebody who truly loved the Subjugator.  People thought he bleed Nemesis squadron green.  Yet so many have forgotten or never knew in the first place that TK started out on the Avenger.  Many members of the Subjugator had never been on the Avenger.  The most difficult thing was probably getting used to a ship that was so large.  The transition from one ship to another was not really that difficult.  People here were ATFers second.  Their ship was third.  People are members of the TIE Corps first and for most.  That is something TK thinks people often forget.  Even with the upcoming Imperial Storm V war game simulation, TK had to remind people that they were all working towards the same common goal.  Human nature just loves competition.

 

TK entered in the code to open the canopy of his ship, the Planetary Fighter Flame.  This ship had been through a lot and had gone through quite a lot of modification.  The bright red paintjob made it easily stand out amongst the wave of TIE black.  It had a secondary power core built into it, at the expense of its warhead launchers.  As such, the ship that normally had the same top speed of an A-Wing now had the shields and laser banks of one too.  TK loved these things.  They were cheap, fast, and reliable.  That’s why he made sure his trading copy was stocked with them for escorts.  Having your own escorts was fair cheaper in the long term then hiring out to a group of mercenaries, and the whole system was much more dependable.  TK sadly put his sword and his lightsaber in the storage behind his seat.  His blaster would be the only inconspicuous thing on him as he walked around Outpost Odin.  These old beat up clothes still fit him fairly well.  He strapped himself in and put on the large yellow and black helmet.  His Hyura Corp helmet had a single, large black visor covering everything from the nose up.  He always thought it looked to Rebel-like.  Well, he wasn’t the one who designed it after all.  TK switched his identity friend or foe system to his Hyura Corp frequency.  Luckily, it was still identified as being neutral to most of the galaxy.  TK looked around in his pockets for that datapad Kane had given him.  Finding it after looking through about twenty of this flightsuit’s ninety or so pockets, TK began to give the flight controller the special launch clearance code Kane had given him.  TK smiled as he got clearance to launch and laughed as he flew overhead of Dante’s missile boat.  He had been waiting to launch to proceed with some capture mission for about ten minutes.  TK was sure the fellow Clan Arconan would give him a lot of grief sometime in the future for it.

 

The red fighter beamed away from the dagger like starship.  Performing a gravity whip past the gas giant Errenet I to gain speed, TK began to type in the coordinates Kane Reese had given him.  Why did he have the sinking suspicion that these coordinates would lead him straight into the center of a sun?  Well, he thought as the ship’s computer began to turn him towards his destination, it is only a micro jump really.  As long as he isn’t directly facing Errenet’s sun, he should be okay.  TK muttered as someone on the bridge began to talk about clearance this and secret code that.  Some people really do need to learn what “secret mission” meant.  On board the Avenger, the vigilant sensor officer continued to monitor the space traffic around the Avenger.  Since the fiasco with the cloaked cruiser, scans of the area have been much more intense.  Still, all those gas clouds and electrical storms on the gas giant below really messed with the sensors.  That nearby nebula was also proving to be quite a challenge.  Members of Wraith squadron, who had been deployed for several hours on patrol around the Avenger, began to file back two at a time to the hangers.  Fury, their replacements, was just about ready to disembark.  Off on the far left hand corner of the holo display, a small fighter marked in purple and labeled Flame winked out as it entered hyperspace.  Then a small black blip appeared right near where it had been.  Another ghost image appearing because of that nebula thought the sensor officer.  Then it too was gone.

 

… to be continued