[FIC]The Technician's Manual

[stingerhs]

before i get started, there's a couple of things that i wanted to make plain. first off, i am not abandoning the "Betrayal and Retribution" series. i'm almost done with the current storyline (The Week of Shifting Sands), and i'll be posting each "day" of in that storyline once a week fairly soon. right now, i'm having some problems finishing it due to the complexity of the plot, and i've been forced to rewrite several sections for various reasons with the main one simply being continuity. that is, of course, the other reason why i haven't updated it on the boards as of yet: i'm not sure if i'll need to make changes to the parts that are completed or not, and i'd rather make those changes before i post them so that you won't have to go back and re-read them.

 

as for this storyline, i just simply wanted to start something new and different. the style is designed to have a rather unpolished feel to it in order to give you a sense that this is someone's memoirs. another thing to note is that the majority of this is being written during my "dead" time at the university, so i'll only be able to finish this thing in parts. i'll do my best to post this thing by chapter so that it will be easier to follow.

 

note - to keep with the style, i have purposefully neglected to include certain pieces of information within the text itself. for the sake of those that need the essentials of the story, i'll post them here:

• Timeline: during the Jedi Civil War shortly after the Mandalorian Wars
• Main Character's name - Tahja Injavarri
• Race - Mirialan
• Sex - Female

 

The Technician's Manual

_________________________

 

Chapter 1 -

 

A Small Spark

________________

 

I never really meant things to end the way they did. Sure, everything had worked out to perfection, but there was no denying the unforeseen consequences. I guess even the greatest of strategists had to deal with things that they had never planned on, but they always seemed to have a resolution to deal with it. At least, they always had a plan until they finally made the wrong plan. My macromathematics teacher back at the University once told me that you can't plan for every variable and every anomaly, but you can plan for the big picture. If that's the case, then perhaps history will think differently of me, but for now, there is nothing for me now except for my guilt and the results of my actions.

 

It all started back in the shipping lanes. Back then, I was learning the "trade" as a young crewman aboard a large freighter called the "Black Hawk". At the time, I was just a young woman that was fresh out of a Corellian University. My father had been the one that was so insistent on me going to school to follow in his footsteps as a Master Technician. Sure, he had been highly regarded as one of the best techs the fledgling CEC had ever had, but I can still remember arguing with him as a teenager about wanting to take my own lot in life and not the one that he wanted for me. That all changed a couple years later when he died. My mother had been long dead, and I was just finishing my second year at the University. I had wanted to do just about anything aside from being a technician, but after he died, I figured that I owed it to him to finish what I had started. Besides, I was finally starting to get to the good stuff in my training; so I just kept on with my major and graduated soon afterwards.

 

Anyways, I left Corellia soon after graduation and ended up getting recruited on what I thought was going to be an ongoing project: the Black Hawk. The frieghter was massive, and it was bristling with weapons and defense systems. I can still remember sulking in my new quarters when I found out that I had been hired to handle navigation and targeting, but as the Captain put it several times, my intellect and natural skill with mathematics came in handy for that sort of work.

 

The Captain, ah yes, the Captain. He was a bit of a character that never really cared much for the odds. It made him a terrible pazaak player, but he knew how to lead a ship even if his methods were unorthodox at best for a smuggling vessel. Although the freighter was a big one, it didn't mean that the Captain was going to stick to subtlety as his best defense and his best weapon when on smuggling runs. On the contrary, he was a believer in big, boisterous results. More than once, he had fought his way out of a Republic Checkpoint; I would know as I was there for all of them, including his last. It was that last run that started it all.

 

The battle started like they had all started: we had just been yanked from hyperspace by Republic Interdictor ships that were conducting a frieghter checkpoint along the Kessel and Corellian Hyperspace Lane. We had gone through the whole "Prepare to be boarded" crap that we had always been put through. Instead of refusing and opening fire like one would expect, the Captain decided to let the Republic Ships get in close first. He knew that the 3 Republic Cruisers would have every gun trained on the "Black Hawk", and we also picked up the signals of tractor beams. I remember looking at the displays and doing some triangulation calculations to determine that all three cruisers had tractor beam locks on us.

 

The problem was that a ship the size of the Black Hawk was a bit too big to use tractor beams on. That didn't stop the Captain from using that to his advantage. As the cruisers got in close, he quickly activated the shields and activated the hyperdrive for a micro jump. Since we were under tow, so to speak, the three cruisers were very violently thrown in our direction, and the noses of the cruisers had been pulled inwards so that it looked like a strange three-point triangle. I can only imagine the chaos on those cruisers as they were suddenly thrown backwards and their tractor beams destroyed from ripping apart while trying to hang on.

 

The thing is, though, is that the Captain wasn't satisfied with just that. We were several hundred clicks from the three cruisers after the microjump, but the Captain turned the Black Hawk around and had us go right at them at full burn. You see, that was the part that I never understood; why attack them when you had already gotten away?

 

At any rate, by the time we were within firing range, one of the cruisers had recovered from the tailspin and was making a beeline for us as well. The two ships were almost evenly matched in firepower, even if the cruiser was a bit larger. Both of us opened fire at the same time with the Black Hawk concentrating its firepower on the bridge of the cruiser. The tactic worked, and our fire broke through the shields of the cruiser and ripped into the bridge. The bridge exploded into a huge fireball, and the ship was set adrift for whomever wanted to salvage it. I don't know how many men died in that moment on that ship, but I do know that everything that happened to me since started right at that point.

 

As the battle played out, the Black Hawk was eventually brought into submission by the other two cruisers. We were boarded and all of us were brought into custody. Well, everyone except the Captain. Apparently one of the soldiers that boarded us took an exception to the Captain killing his brother that was serving on the bridge of the ship we shot up; let's just say that being shot in the head from point blank is not a pretty sight. Then again, it was an act of mercy compared to what the rest of us were going to get.

 

You see, the cruiser that we had shot up had been commanded by a Jedi. Who that Jedi was, I don't know or even care to remember, but it was the cause of my problems. You see, the cruisers that we had encountered there weren't Republic ships at all. They were a contingent of Sith Cruisers that were posing as Republic Ships in order to make off with war supplies. So that Jedi we killed, whoever he or she was, was really a Dark Jedi, and even though there were a lot of Dark Jedi back in those days, this one seemed to have quite a bit of influence or had been popular with his, or her, men. I guess it was no wonder that soldier had gotten away with murdering the Captain during the boarding process with as little discipline as a smack to the back of the helmet by his sergeant.

 

First things first: we were locked in the brig of one of the cruisers. For a greenhorn that had never experienced prison, my nerves were completely whacked. I just remember being huddled up in a corner with my veins filled with adrenaline. From there, things got worse. A couple of Dark Jedi that were on this cruiser ended up interrogating us. I remember watching my friends getting tortured, and in some cases mutilated, with this 'Force' that these Jedi used. It was horrifying at the time, and I remember that being forced to watch my fellow crewmates suffer was torture enough for my tastes. That's when they got to me. To make a long story short, I ended up losing the ability to use my right lower leg and had to get it amputated after the ordeal.

 

After that, I remember just laying in my cell wondering why I wasn't dead. The one crewman that had been with me in my cell was laying on the ground, and I remember trying to check on him later only to find him dead from his wounds. I would later be tortured another couple of times; I don't remember the exact number of times and I honestly don't care to remember. I did find out, though, that I was the last person from the crew that was left alive. I still don't know if they intended it that way or not, but I just remember being so alone in that cell. The rations they gave me tasted like the old tea leaves back in Corellia, and I could've sworn that the water was little more than recycled urine. There was definitely little about that experience that I really want to remember.

 

I did eventually escape, though. They were going to to transfer me to a different holding cell for whatever reason, and I decided to make a break for it. To do it, I remember catching one of the three Sith Soldiers off guard, and I remember being somewhat surprised to find myself using that soldier as a human shield while I held the Soldier's rifle in one hand. In truth, I'm still surprised that I managed to do such a thing since I had never had any sort of combat training; then again, my father had always pointed out that many of the people of my heritage had been Jedi in the past. I wasn't really thinking about that then, though. What I did know at the time was that the Sith weren't likely to spare either the soldier or myself if I tried to hold him hostage; the Sith always knew how to deal with those situations: just kill everyone involved and ask questions later.

 

I just remember staring down the two soldiers opposite of me with their rifles at the ready, and I remember that was when I felt true hatred for the first time. I never gave those soldiers a chance, especially with the rifle in full automatic fire mode, as unintentional as that was. With a squeeze of the trigger, the rifle sprayed blaster fire everywhere, and I was actually quite lucky that I managed to kill both of those soldiers given how wildly the rifle was bucking around. Then, my prisoner tried to fight me off, but that backfired as I managed to get him on the ground and put probably a dozen blaster shots into his head. Those men were the first ones that I killed up close, and they turned out to be the first of many that I would kill.

 

Using the rifle as best I could, I managed to fight my way to the brig's central station. It definitely wasn't easy with my lame right leg and my lack of training, but I managed to fight the few of them off somehow. Getting to the central terminal, I was finally able to get in my element as a tech specialist. Hacking my way into the system, I wreaked absolute havoc on their systems. They even tried to cut me off via other terminals, but there was no way they could manage it. After about one hour, I had successfully locked down the entire brig area with the riot control systems and the Force Field systems, and I had also locked out the vast majority of the ship's main functions from the best of their techies.

 

After they realized the havoc I was causing on their systems, I guess it dawned on them how dangerous I could be. Given that they couldn't even come close to approaching the entire Brig Deck without suffering major casualties, they tried to talk me out of it. Heh, if you thought that listening to diplomatic talks was a waste of time, then just imagine listening to them give me their empty death threats and the whole "you'll want to die a thousand times over after we get done with you" crap. I didn't care especially since I almost had full control over the ships including navigation, engine, hyperdrive, and most importantly, life support.

 

They wanted to play with me? Fine, I wanted to play with them, too. I cut the bridge off from the rest of the ship with a series of Force Fields and then cut off life support to the Bridge. Heh, they didn't like that too much when they realized that they only had maybe a half hour before they suffocated or froze to death. In the meantime, all they could do was to watch as I pulled the cruiser out of hyperspace and put it to a complete stop. I then decided to mess with them by allowing them access to certain systems, and then cutting them off as they accessed them. Better yet, I remember manipulating the system to simulate that some systems were available and fed them false data to confuse the hell out of them. All the while, I toyed with them by periodically turning on the heat in the bridges life support but not the CO2-to-O2 converters and visa versa. For me, it was sweet revenge while I figured out the next stage of my escape.

 

It didn't take long as figured that the best place to go would be Corellia itself. Why not? I had been en route to Corellia on the Black Hawk before this whole mess started, and I knew that they had the military forces to handle the process of boarding the ship and "cleansing" it of the Sith. By that time, I had complete control of the ship right at my fingertips. Of course, it was becoming more and more of a challenge to maintain that control as they connected astrodroids to various terminals in order to regain control. Then again, that was easily fixed by simply overloading the terminals. That let me kill two gundarks with one shot: first the terminals to prevent access, and then the droids themselves. Simple and effective.

 

Meanwhile, I had just put the cruiser into hyperspace en route to Corellia. I figured that things would be rather simple from there on out until I realized that I was at least a two full days away from Corellia, and I had no food. I had plenty of water courtesy of the refresher in the room, but with no food, I was in trouble since the amount of rations they had given me during my confinement were far from adequate. I had always been a bit on the skinny side, and my stomach was aching with hunger. Since I was at a point where I wasn't going to lose control of the ship, I decided to look around the Brig deck for food. I never did find any food, but I did end up finding something better: an astrodroid. Its designation was T1 Mark 4, or T1-M4.

 

When I found him, he was in a sad state of repair since he was one of the droids that had been knocked out by my previous terminal overload. After making a couple of quick repairs and attaching my own restraining bolt, T1-M4 became my droid. I rather fondly remember the droid thanking me for helping him and trying to hurry off just before the restraining bolt was installed. That little thing always had a bit of free spirit in him from the start, and that ability proved to be Tim's, as I later called him, greatest asset throughout all my journeys.

 

At that point, though, I was still thinking about food, and I decided that the best way of doing it would be for Tim to get it for me since he could easily move about the ship with no problems from the crew. To keep him from running into the men that had been working fervently to break through the Force Fields, I decided to send him through the ventilation system. As I sent him off, the only thing that I could remember was my stomach growling at me in hope that he pulled it off. Heading back to the terminal to check on the system status, I did my best to monitor his status remotely. Sure enough, Tim ended up bringing me back a full crate load full of soldier's rations, and let me tell you, those rations were infinitely better than the crap the Sith had fed me earlier. Yeah, it was just a bunch of that freeze-dried crap, but I just remember enjoying it like a delicacy.

 

After that point, there wasn't anything truly noteworthy of what happened; besides, the rest of the trip was so dull that I probably couldn't recount every trivial event. The only thing that was really noteworthy was my desire for revenge. That feeling just kept building up in me every time I tripped over my lame leg and was reminded of the pain their torture. Soon, I was wrestling with truly diabolical thoughts like a strong desire to overheat the engine and flood every compartment except the bridge with toxic coolant gases or just simply shutting down the C02-02 systems and let them all die of C02 poisoning. The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to do it. Its not like I couldn't; the entire ship was mine to control. The problem was that in the day, I was naive enough to have a conscience, and both parts of me wrestled with the idea for quite a while. Heck, I didn't even make a decision until after the cruiser left hyperspace in Corellia's system. By that time, I had already made a program that would automate the entire process of the overheating engine idea I said earlier, and all I needed to do was to press a button to activate the program.

 

The problem was that I couldn't bring myself to do it. The more I thought about their families and my humanity, the more I stayed my hand from pressing that button. As I contacted the local Corellian Military as to the situation on the ship, I finally made a final decision, and I pressed a button. It wasn't the button to activate the program, and I can still see myself reading the button's label to this day: "Delete Program". That was the only time that I ever showed those Sith mercy, and I regret that decision to this day. Even at that moment, there was a part of me that heavily regretted that decision, but it was no matter then since I was about to be rescued.

 

As the Corellians boarded the cruiser, I did my best to help them and monitor them from my terminal, and I was rescued shortly thereafter. You see, though, the problem with my indecision that ended up sparing the Sith from death ended up being a futile decision at best. The Corellians, for some reason, had decided to rescue me and destroy the cruiser after I was off. I can still remember watching with mixed reactions with Tim sitting next to me on the rescue craft as the Corellians opened fire on the defenseless cruiser. I can distinctly remember the irony of my decision that had spared them and the same decision to contact the Corellians. Both choices would've resulted in the deaths of those Sith that were on board, but I had no way of knowing that. In that moment, I knew that I should never had bothered to stay my hand, and I vowed to not bother being so merciful in the future.

 

I guess that still doesn't account for the moment that I truly decided to do what I've done, though. It gives me a reason; a justification for my actions. You see, I never really got the resolve needed to do what I did until I woke up in a Corellian hospital to find out that I had to learn how to use a bionic leg attachment to replace my lame leg. I just remember the frustrations of that learning process, and I distinctly remember making a vow to myself. It was a vow that I ended up living my life by over the next couple of years. The vow was for me to be the end of these Sith and all they stood for. Sure, it was a crazy idea, but I never said that I was young and naive for nothing. The important thing, though, was that I had resolved myself to get the job done, and for me, that was more than enough.

[Relenzo2]

Wow.

Um. Nice character.

I can see this is your baby.

[Hallucination]

I must say, the story in this fic is very strong, and the spelling error in the title is FTW.

I look forward to reading more.

 

title fixed. thanx for the heads up. -stingerhs