Snippet #2022494

The hangar was easy to find. It had to be in the rush of an attack when half-asleep pilots and crewman were stumbling to the scramble. Once a map terminal had put her boots on the right path, Jessica had just followed the broadest passageways and the smell. Yes, the smell. Void-touched metal, feul and hydraulic fluid, the sickly sweet-smoke smell of engine exhaust... all of it a fragrance that'd been ground into her memory of service. When she first stepped out into the huge open space, she stopped and smiled, staring out over the activity and the looming shapes of the various craft that were being nestled into their berths.

She belonged here, more so then anywhere else on the ship. Officer country still felt strange and alien to a career wrench-turner, so it was a welcome change of pace to step back into the beating heart of a fighter wing. Cold pricked the skin and the deck was too hard beneath the boots, acrid hazmat smells assaulted the nose, the lights were too bright, tools dropped and maintainers shouted and equipment whined. It was beautifully overwhelming, and it was hers.

The mechanics were cursing the shape and condition of other birds; those 'special' aircraft that belonged to some of the other pilots. While the ones in the cockpit swore by their performance and special modifications, the ground crew were the ones that had to deal with the constant headache of unpredictable maintainence and specialized tie-downs for non-standard hull shapes. And the officers that insisted on their own maintainence were the worst. If it took a whole maintainence department to divy up spaceframe, powerplants, electrical, electronics, lifesupport, and ordinance; one stick-jock claiming to know all of the necessary systems could cause migranes up and down a whole chain of command and put himself - and his bird - in some serious jeapordy. Before she ever picked up a wrench on her own craft, Hyena would have to do some serrious trust work with the shops she'd once had qualifications for back when she wore stripes instead of bars.

"How you doin, Chief?" You want in good with maintainence? Get in good with the Maintainence Chief. He was one of the group that Hyena had been bullshitting with out in airlock before boarding, and meets her handshake on equal terms, "I'm looking for a bird."

"I guessed that, ma'am." He snorts. The deal wasnt all one way; it never hurt for a crewman to have an ear that had rank, even if that rank was just a Flight Officer, and she'd already promised him a pack of Earth-made cigarettes for first pick of the proverbial litter, "You're going to want 338. Her book isnt the cleanest, but she's been up-and-up for just about every sortie they've thrown at her. Just make sure those smokes find their way to my desk later. Mars tabacco tastes like shit."

"It's the dirt, Chief. Gets into everything. Eventually anything you eat tastes the same." She laughs, being native to the Red Planet, herself, and gives him a reassuring wave prior to making her way back out onto the bay.

'Her' aircraft was already good to go. Its class had been a backbone of space superiority combat for years, and the berths were already configured for it. Huge, engine-heavy, dirty, and so ugly she was a work of art. This beater may not be RnD's new toy, but at least she could count on it when it mattered. Hyena reaches her hands out to lay them, palms flat, on the cold skin below where her name would be stenciled, smiling up at the craft. It was nasty-looking in every good way, a bare-bones bloody warbird.

"Hello, beautiful."