Chapter Text
The sound of another control panel blowing its fuses punctuated the smoky air. In the cockpit of an old Surron freighter, one man finished battling an open and smoldering circuit panel while the other gripped the flight controls in an attempt to stabilize the unruly craft as it lurched from hyperspace unexpectedly.
“I told you we should have brought Beebee-ate!” the pilot yelled at his at his companion, though not in an attempt to berate him. Despite their predicament there was an excited smirk on his face; he was enjoying this. Their recent mission had gone rather smoothly, but the old bird wasn’t going to make getting to the finish line easy for them.
“You have an unnatural attachment to that droid,” the other man snapped back as he slammed the panel shut and gripped the co-pilot’s chair, pulling himself into it as he fought against the pitch and roll of the ship. Rapidly his fingers moved across the controls, glancing quickly at the error messages and flipping switches. The ship reeled to the side as the pilot narrowly missed hitting another large piece of debris.
“En-one cut power to the engines!”
The pilot looked over at his friend, “Snap, if we cut those engines we might not get them back.”
“At this rate, we’re going to be another chunk in this starship graveyard.”
The sounds of the engines hastily powering down echoed through the freighter. As the ship stuttered to a stop both men relaxed their grips on their respective controls. Poe Dameron leaned back in his chair and cracked his knuckles while Snap Wexley rubbed a hand across his forehead, trying to take in all of the data scrolling past him on the screens.
“The good news is we still have maneuvering thrusters,” he said after a moment. “And power flow and life support are uncompromised.”
“Hyperdrive?”
Snap shook his head.
The pilot leaned forward. “Back up hyperdrive?”
“We’ll have to cannibalize it for parts to fix the primary.”
“What about the comm?”
Snap raised his hand and rocked it back and forth. “Sorry, Commander, short range broadcasts only.”
Poe ran a hand through his hair, unruly from the weeks spent on this special mission and away from his usual job as Black Leader. The two men had played the part of unscrupulous traders, visiting several smuggler haunts and black market stations in search of specialized supplies, information, and allies. As a starfighter commander, Poe Dameron wasn’t usually assigned these types of missions, but rumors of former Imperial factions churning out new starfighter technology had caught both Poe and Snap’s interest.
They sat in silence for a few moments as Poe contemplated their predicament and Snap furiously worked at the computer, trying to determine what was broken and if he could possibly fix it. “Beebee-ate never would have given us such dodgy hyperspace coordinates.”
Snap paused to frown at Poe’s ribbing and opened his mouth to reply, but instead a series of irritated whirs and beeps sounded behind them. R6-N1’s angular dome moved back and forth insisting that he was not at fault, but the ship was an ancient piece of trash and deserved to be in this junkyard. Poe let out a laugh and gave the droid a good-natured thump on his dome. He wasn’t too worried; they had plenty of supplies so they wouldn’t starve while they fixed the ship. Whether or not they could fix it was another question entirely.
Snap let out a sigh and looked up from the computer screen out through the front viewport. “Bad news is we don’t have all the parts we need on board. Good news is we’re in the one place we could probably find them.”
~*~
It was slow work with only the two of them, three counting the R6 unit. Snap was splitting his attention between disassembling the backup hyperdrive and assisting Poe in utilizing the sensors to scan for the key compounds found in the components they would need. Several hours went by with the pair pausing only briefly to stretch and down a protein shake before getting back to work.
Snap was struggling with separating a coupling from its housing when Poe’s voice came over the ship’s comm, “Snap, get up here. Something’s still on out there.”
“What did you find?” Snap asked and fell into the co-pilot’s seat as he used his sleeve to wipe some of the grease and sweat off his face.
Poe stood up and rotated one of the screens towards his partner and pointed at a small green dot amid a sea of white ones. “It’s faint, but this ship is mostly intact and cycling power.”
Snap rubbed at his beard absently as he studied the image and accompanying data. “That’s impossible. Everything we’ve seen so far out here is at least forty years old, most of it older. This junk has been out here for years. How could it keep going?”
R6-N1 had followed Snap to the cockpit and whistled behind him, indicating that whatever it was must be made of better material than the piece of junk they were flying around in.
“It’s our best bet. If it’s still running, the parts will be salvageable.” He stood and clapped Snap on the shoulder, a grin on his face. “Let’s see if those vacc suits work as well as the rest of the stuff on this ship.”
~*~
The Force was with them when it came to docking with the derelict, yet somehow still powered vessel. Both sets of docking clamps and pressure seals engaged. Getting the door to open took some convincing by their astromech, which then the droid gloated about after succeeding in his task. Prior to docking, Poe had run a sensor sweep for life signs which had come back inconclusive. Attempting to contact the ship via their comm also yielded mixed results: it was as if the transmitter had just been left open before the ship was abandoned, or worse. Poe and Snap stepped through the threshold in their bulky enviro-suits with R6-N1 whirring on ahead of them.
“Atmo is barely breathable. Keep the suits on until we find a way to restart the air scrubbers,” Poe ordered after looking at the information on his datapad. “I’ll take En-one to find the bridge, see if we can’t get some of the systems up and find out what this old bird’s story is.”
Inside his helmet, Snap raised an eyebrow. “I thought we were here to salvage parts and get the hell out of here, Commander?”
Poe gave his friend a wave as he started off down the dark corridor, the spotlight on his suit lighting the way. “But now it’s an adventure, Snap!”
“I guess I’ll just start digging through supply closets and the cargo hold then!” Snap loudly called after him, which was entirely unnecessary as they were communicating via the comm inside the suits.
~*~
It took longer than expected for Poe and the droid to find the bridge. He figured this ship for an old, and large, Corellian freighter. He guessed its age to be at least fifty years, but likely older and, as he had discovered, heavily modified from the original design. All of the consoles were dark, and when he wiped away the caked on dust and tapped a few buttons, nothing responded. It was a clear indicator that the ship wasn’t in a low power mode and that the power cycling he had detected was not coming from the main computer.
“All right then, have your way with it.” Poe awkwardly took a seat in the pilot’s chair, letting R6-N1 roll fully into the surprisingly small cockpit and plug into the scomp port. A few frustrated sounding whistles and beeps later, Poe got the idea that something else in the ship was monopolizing what was left of the power.
“See if you can access the ship’s data: logs, manifests, port call, anything. Without interrupting power to whatever it’s trying to keep going. Can you tell me where it is?” The droid gave his response and Poe clicked the button on his suit, opening his comm to Snap. “Wexley, the ship is diverting power to something in the cargo hold. Meet me down there.”
“Already here, Commander. You have to see this. Whoever owned this ship had quite the collection…”
Poe’s brows crimped together in confusion. “Collection? Of what?”
“People.”