The wind whistled through the pillars and decaying statues of the valley like ghosts lamenting their lives lost. Raezyr surveyed the land spread out before him. In the setting sun he could almost see those ghosts. A few remnants remained of the battle that had taken place here a few years ago. A broken glaive here, half of a mandalorian helm there.
Raezyr turned his attention to the hull of the shuttle, it's nose buckled slightly as it rested against the rock out cropping. He checked his data pad and made notations as to what parts needed to be replaced.
Trychon hadn't bothered to close the hatch when he had left it here, and Raezyr climbed aboard. He was suddenly overwhelmed as if the ghosts from the Valley had claimed the shuttlecraft for their own and were taking exception to his presence. He shrugged off the feeling and sat down in the pilots seat.
"Might as well see if I can fire this up," he muttered as he began the pre-launch sequences and systems checks.
Suddenly the ship started running a pre-programmed autopilot sequence. He checked the nav-com for the destination.
Arkanis? That's close to Tatooine. Why does that name ring a bell?
He didn't have time to ponder it. Right now he had to get this auto pilot shut down before the ship tried to take him there. Raezyr furiously began trying to switch to manual control, but none of the overrides worked.
The ship's repulsor lifts began to whine, and the screams of the metal against rock rang out like a krayt dragon as the craft began to lift off.
The auto pilot must be hard wired!
Raezyr saw a tool compartment and opened it, looking for any kind of tool to pry the panel off. He found one that would work and furiously began wedging the tool along the edges of the panel. He glanced out of the transparisteel cockpit and noticed that the ship was now several hundred feet above the valley.
If this thing reaches space, I'm going to be sucked straight out into the vacuum.
He finally got the panel off, tossed his helm to the side for a better look. Sure enough. Someone had bypassed all the override controls.
No wonder Trych couldn't reprogram it. The destination was hardwired into the system.
He could feel the ship moving fast, clearly accelerating through the atmosphere. He could hear the wind whistling through the ripped and damaged hull section of the nose. Raezyr quickly began stripping wires and re-attaching them. It wasn't normally a hard proceedure, if one had a half hour or so, but he didn't have a half an hour. A few more minutes was all he had. Already the cabin pressure alarms were starting to sound, the warbling of the alarms was not something he needed. He wiped the sweat from his brow and took a deep breath.
Only he couldn't get one. The air was getting thin. He glanced out the window. Already he could make out the curvature of Korriban.
Raezyr panted heavily, trying to catch his breath as he started re-connecting the last of the wires.
That should do it!
He slid the panel back in place hand tried the override proceedures again. The nav screen indicated the shuttle was now on manual control. Raezyr immediately began the decent back to the surface.
When he was low enough to catch his breath again he contacted Dreshdae and got permission to land in the next bay over from the Jet Razor. He also arranged to have maintanence meet him when he landed.
After landing and confirming that the Czerka engineers could fix the shuttle here, he put in the work order and headed down the trail to the Academy.
Eat.... Shower.... Bed....
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