Athena's Overhaul (compleated. enjoy)

[Onas Knox]

"CAPASA MI AMIGOS!" Onas shouted as he entered Godfry's storage bay 92, resting place of the allmighty Athena. His friends looked up with smiles and shouts.

Nick briskly walked to him, "Capaaaasa miho! Umpalumpa los' pantalones!" he said amidst his laughing, with his hand outstreached and Onas caught it mid clap.

"Some of that was spanish," Onas laughed, and caught a few more handshakes and fist bumbs.

Timbo, a man twice as dark as Nick and bigger than both of them together, was about to give him a low five, when he withdrew his hand, "Yur no contagaise are ya?" He laughed and punched Onas in the ribs.

Onas smashed the giants arm knowing there was no real reason big T would even feel it. After a few minutes of joking and laughing, Onas inquired of the crew, "So what the hell happened, one second I'm rewiring the starboard sensor array, the next I'm on Ariel?"

"Ah naw boss, yo passes ou 'n si' hew vire ducks, ve ad ta dag yur pigu out." Nellen said in his broken accent, "Ust passes vigh ou!"

Onas listened carefully, but Nel talked so fast, most of it was mubeling, but Onas' smile just kept getting bigger as he took Nel's shoulder and with four fingers addressed the man in slow, clear, overly-pronouched basic, "I have no idea what your saying," He laughed and Nick threw in "Right?" Onas continued, "I never know what your saying Nel, but your very passionate about i..." he finished with laughter as Nellen socked him in the chest, and hollered;

"Ni ta ma de!"

Onas laughed harder and said "That! ... I understood that!, Karistal ka-le-ear!" He laughed again and dodged a second punch, Alice Jumped in with, "Still better than your Chinese Onas"

He mock laugh at her, "So seriously, what happened?"

Nick filled him in on his last two weeks, how Onas just fell out in the ductwork and Nick took him to the hospital, who had him transfered to Ariel. "On the way there..."

"Yeah, the letter said you got tagged?" Onas interupted, he flipped out one of his hands that had been folded across his chest.

"Naw, homes, you know I ain't got tagged!" Nick exclaimed with forced indignation, "But you 'member Ariel is where Thomas Hughes kicks it, sooo..." Nick explained with his hands criss-crossing.

"Ahhhh, right. Forgot about that, right right. Ida bounced too." Onas said looking off towards the Athena.

"To work?" Nick offered.

"To work," Onas confirmed.

Alice took him under the arm and and happily annouched that she finished his work on the relays and they were all working. It was insisted that he double check it. She was very excited, and getting... better as an electrition. Onas addressed her, "What about the rear landing hydralics?"

Alice walked away eyes rolling, "Almost there.."

"Hey we work before we..." Onas started but T interupted him.

"Yu com chek the augsileree soon." He said, and walked away as well.

"I gotcha T," Onas replied with an odd look, and looked to Nick who just srugged his shoulders. Onas checked over his sholder towards Alice before asking, "How are the starboard relays?"

Nick's hand glided over a pad, lightly and rapidly touching keys before handing him the diagnostic, "It ain't finished yet, still missfiring on number four." Onas couldn't even cuss before Nick caught him compleately off gaurd with, "We got bigger problems though, none of the coils are routing." Justin picked up and handed Onas a charred piece of metal that literally ran in thousands of little circles with two red lines cascading throught the middle of each. It was suppose to be a brilliant gold, but it was singed till it looked like a chunk of old firewood.

"Felhua!" Onas stared at it and began, "Ta ma de gou niang yang de, don't tell me they all look like this!"

Nel's voice was sullen when he said "'ll a' hem, ahfing i' woosabe"

Onas looked at him a second shaking his head, then looked to Nick, "Translation please?"

"Like I know what he's saying..." Nick said and without interuption continued, while Nel wandered away cursing, "... All six of them burnt out. That's our problem."

Justin jumped in, "Couldn't we just use the ones off the thunder-bird?"

But Nick adressed it before Onas could, "Your not suppose to re-use 'em at all, that's the second set we've burned up. You put another in there, it'l jus do the same thang." Justin looked to Onas who nodded in agreement. He held the coil up and let it drop down to the worktable, the blackened tips of the fragile metal bending up. Onas reached in his pocket and got out some cigarettes. While he lit one up ten feet from flammable gasses, Nick continued, "Once you seal the coil in, the edges bur against the wall. That doesn't matter inside, because theres no air in the vacume. Once you open it up..."

"The air cracks the finish, yep." Justin finished.

Nick looked to Onas, "We don't have the budget for this."

"Why are we talking budget, lets just talk to Nobs, the factory's only two hundread miles from here anyway." Justin offered using his thumb to point behind him like the place was over his shouder.

"In our own back yard, not hap'nin," Onas replied.

"Don't get me wrong OJ, I'm glad your up an at 'em, but what you want to do about this?" Nick asked.

"The systems online are running smooth?" Onas asked.

"Other than the starboard relays, but its all on the city grid, once we flip to internal power... I could'nt say." Nick answered shrugging. He was right, you cant test it without the coils. Onas would have to think on that one. He took a long drag off his cigg and listened as Nick continued, "We got most of the bugs out last week, but I need you to look over a couple of things, the relays for one, but also the running lights under the canopy wont trip, the second coolent tank is still running hot, but the sensor still shows it as operational, then we got the secondary auxilary, Big T got it hoisted yesterday and Alice has been at it, but really it should be you finishing the harness. Lots of diagnostic checks for you too. The coils are a mugou but we got other work right in front of us. I mean, where do you want to begin?"

"I'll get the relays first," Onas stated taking off his shirt, his black tanktop revieling the tattoo's down his shoulders. With a short sleeve shirt on, you'd never know he had any. He also had tats on his chest and back. His brother Justin had them all over, but Onas couldn't have distingishing marks like that because of his job. He went on to his station and continued, "And the canopy lights sense I'll be in there anyway. Have Andre help Alice with the hydrolics. J-man, feel like squeesing into the pit wit me?" he asked gathering his tools from his gangbox.

"Nope." Justin said looking up wide eyed and knowing that it wasn't really a question.

"Good, grab testers and strippers." OJ said ignoring him, Nick told him how glad he was that Onas was 'back on his feet' and then moved on to what he was doing before Onas got back. Nick was vital to this kind of job because of his extensive knowlege of starship systems. He was an engeneer once apon a time, and Onas rarely met a more talented man.

Nick may not have gotten his hands dirty often, but he stayed on task and made sure everyone did their job right. He bossed Onas around on his own gigs and was very well paid for it. After all, no one else could do his job even if they wanted too. Nobody did anyway, Onas thought, Nick delt with problem after problem. When he had tried that job, he felt like he wasn't acomplishing anything, there was zero motivation to finish what you had in front of you when it was just gonna be another problem your team couldn't figure out next. Onas never relised how much of a headace it was to multitask and micromanage every little detail untill he had to do it himself. So he gladly let Nick handle that job, and good riddince to it.

Onas and Justin climbed into the ducts and crawled along until they were shoulder to shoulder against the main bus. Onas began testing each of the circuts with Justins help, and slowly but surely they started making progress. Alice had finished pluging in all the boards and tacked down the grounds, which was about all was left to do from three weeks ago, but somewhere the computer wasn't communicating with the main drive.

Justin called out check after check until they found the dead end. It took them a minute to realize the wire was kinked, and rather than patch a brand new system, Onas opted to simply replace it. He shimmied back down the shaft and gathered the new componants. Timbo offered some dinner, but Onas declined untill he got the relay online. Once he got back to Justin, they slowly replaced the home run, and got the cluster spot-welded back into place.

Onas wiped the sweat off his brow and started reeling up his cable, "Call it in, might as well stay put till they run it."

"On it, want me to go ahead and run a check?" Justin asked, then he called Nick, "Radio Nick... hey we got it, start the starboard flares."

"Easy now, tell him go easy." Onas instructed.

"Oj said to go easy on it... heh, Nick said mind yur frigin buisness..." Justin lit a cigerette, then went ahead and plugged in his pad to the main bus.

"Will it even clear during a coldstart?" Onas asked, taking the cigerette from his brothers lip and quickly toking it before he could be stopped.

"You just sit there and look stupid, I'll handle the important la shi." Justin retorted, snatching his cigerette back.

Onas scoffed, "Oh yeah, 'Important stuff'!" he laughed insultingly, "You do that slapnuts..."

Justin shushed him as the main bus hummed to life and they waited in silence passing the cigerette back and forth untill Nick announced that the diognastic cleared the system.

"Sweet," Justin declared while doublechecking it on thier end, then he looked to Onas, "Wanna get chow, or fix the running lights?"

"Lets get the lights, I wanna get out of here and not have to come back."

"I figured you would say that, with what happened an all, I'm only stayin cause yur gimp." Justin joked, while he slid down the shaft to the turn that took them under the canopy.

"Eat me," Onas shot back. Below them someone banged against the metal grate under the shaft and hollered. It was Alice shouting something. "What'd she say?"

"Hang on," Justin said, holding up his hand, "WHAT?" he yelled, his voice amplified by the long narrow corridor. The muffled responce came back twice, both times they stayed quiet. Then J touched his earpiece listening... "Come again?... Tell her to shove it, I aint got time for that."

"What'd she say?" Onas asked.

Justin started moving again and simply said, "You know Alice, jus some bs that aint important." J often left Onas in the dark when he had the radio, and OJ often thought it was a control thing, but it didn't bother him, he'd been that way since they were little. It was another hour before they finished in the bowels of the Athena, but both men were glad not to have to climb back in it when the emerged late that afternoon.

Onas got a bowl full of the chicken and rice that Timbo left for them, and sat back to eat. Nick and Alice sat down at the table with him, and Onas listened as Alice went over her progress on the Hydrolics. Alice would never admit it openly, but Onas knew she was glad he was back to finish the electrics. In truth, of the whole team, Onas was the only one who could do "anything" on the job. The only one who could keep pace with him was Nick, but even Nick had to seek his council on electrical issues. Over a decade of running chop shops for Sid had made Onas an invarible encyclopedia of anything related to starships.

He finished his meal and followed Alice back to Andre, who was still hard at it. Andre showed him the issues, and Onas began troubleshooting. Two hours of that, and all six landing gears were ready to go. Next he got with Timbo on the auxilary, and his work progressed. That night some time after two a.m. Onas, Nick and Justin were the only ones still awake. They were working in the command deck, Justin and Onas endlessly smoking cigerettes, and Nick puffing away on his scented cigars. The bridge had a thick haze ligering by now that you could push around with your hands. Onas had a handfull of wires when Andre sleepily walked into the bridge to see if he could help. He instantly began coughing.

J-man laughed and said rather sarcasticly, "The 02 scrubbers could use some attention!"

Nick laughed and added, "Want us to roll the windows down homie?"

"I mean damn, ya'll got anxiaty issues or what?" Andre asked. Dre didn't use abusive lanquege of any kind ordinarily, and Onas was glad to see his crew working with such high spirits, despite the switch. Usually they were taking the things apart, and there was a nice payoff. But each of the eleven owed a debt to Onas, and this would square all of it. In fact, he might have been handing out a few markers at this point...

Onas streched out his back and his spine cracked nicely, how long had he been hunched over anyway? He continued to rought the co-pilots backup cables while his team joked. Onas had plenty of friends in his life, but this was his core group, his crew. This might well be the last time they dared to work together. With the Alliance and all the crap that had happened. He was glad none of them were there the night of the raid. He stopped that thought, no need to relive it again. These were his last friends and family, and they were ok. Thats what mattered.

He thought more on the Athena. This project overall had taken months longer than expected. Every time they decided to add something, five things had to be changed. That would wear down any crew, but his was here by choice, and each was more than talented enough to handle the job.

"So Onkey," Andre interuped his revelry, "Me an Rigo' were talkin about the paintjob."

Onas looked up surprised, his eyebrows raised, "The what?"

Nick jumped in, "Oh yeah dawg, I forgot, you wern't here for that one. A couple a days ago we were talkin about the Athena's hull, you know we added plates from the Margo, and the panels don't match. Everyone thought it'd be a shame to do all this work and have a halfazzed exterior, so we were gonna repaint it."

Andre let him finish and explained, "That ship ya'll got attacked on, the Courtuose, member we hauled it back here? Well it has six hundread gallons of gray primer in tote tanks. All we'd have to do is get our hands on a finish color, and a bit more primer, what Nick, say another two hundread gallons?" Nick nodded and blew out the thick smoke of his cigar. Andre continued, "To tell you the truth, with the problems we had, and you comin down with the junk, we all kinda wrote it off. But you wern't down long, thank God, so I wanted to put it back on the table. Like Nick said, all this work, the Athena is practically a brand new ship. Nobody wants it looking like some crap we just slammed together, you know, despite how we slammed it together..."

Onas smiled, friends and family, he was proud to have 'em. "I'm down like four flat tires, what color dress should the Athena wear to the dance?"

"Gold," J answered immediantly.

"Naw black!" Nick argued, "She's nearly a warship now anyway!"

"I say hot green," Andre put in, when everyone stared at him he added, "That's the original color of the stripes, and the highlights, I think it'd look slammin."

Onas was about to speak when J started, "Friggin hot green, it ain't a landcar idjit. Naw gold Nick, when I think of Athena, I see Gold, you know. Like the the Greek gods an such. No? Gold?"

Onas and Nick exchanged glances. "Wow, no J, not Gold."

"Well what about highlights in gold, black on gold... or, I guess it'd be gold on black technically." J pondered aloud.

Nick started again, "I like it, but you'd never see the gold in the deep, or in re-entry."

"True." Justin admited.

"So what about GREEN on black?" Andre put in.

"That's actually not bad," Onas mussed out loud.

"So there you go. What you workin on OJ?" Andre asked quickly changing the subject, like that would stop the debate.

"Aw nothin, just tiein up loose ends, to be honest I'm just tired."
"I feel ya," His brother said, "With that crud you just had, what'd you sleep like two weeks straight?"

"At least, I imagine most who came back from it feel about that way" Nick summarised.

"Well gentelmen," J stood streching. Anyone who knew him could tell you what he was about to say, "Onkey may not be tired, but I'm done. I'll catch ya'll on the flip side."

"Tommorow bro." Onas answered.

"Later J." Nick said slowly and streched his hand back, Justin was still in mid stretch, as he let his arms down, he leaned his left hand forward compleating the up-top with a clean follow through.

Onas, turned and looked at the clock on his pad, and decided J had the right idea, "Yeah, I guess I need to try an get my system in check."

"You need to boss," Justin said on his way out.


The next morning Onas woke up revin to go. The Athena, for all intents and purposes, was nearly complete. He felt like he slept all night, but he quickly relised it had only been two hours, he'd try again tonight. For now, Onas went to work on the number two coolent tank. He didn't want to wake Nick up to find out exactly what was wrong with it, so he began troubleshooting from the checklist. Rodigo moseyed in around a half hour later and looked a bit suprised to see him, "Mornin boss, stay up all night?" he asked.

"Sup Rigo, naw holmes, I caught a lil." Onas answered.

"Gonna get the O-rings out huh? I'm glad Nico pawned that off on you, he was sure tryin to get me to do it." Rodrigo laughed.

'Ugh, the O-rings, fantastic.' Onas thought. Maybe he should have started something else. This was gonna take the rest of the day, "I mean, if you want it it's yours."

"No no," Rodrigo said grabbing his belt and leaving the engine room quickly, "It's all you Onas!"

"Thanks For Taking One For The Team!" Onas yelled after him.

"MY PLEASURE!" Rigo's voice piped in over the engine room intercom, he himself was long gone. Onas smiled at the ceiling and shook his head as he unplugged his pad, and began what amounted to tearing every component apart but the coolent itself. Onas worked at a good clip for several hours before getting to the thermatic block mass, which was a long way of saying starship radiator... Onas stoped, was he talking to himself? It was about a billion little clips and ichy leaflets that had to be unscrewed. Each bushing was reversed and there was no way to avoid getting your hands cut. At some point, he was going to bleed, gloves or not. Onas hated gloves anyway, he sighed and got the drill out.

"Sup bro!" J announced himself walking into the room, "Where are we... Oh, nice. The radiator leafs. Lemme change my position, where are YOU at with this? Cause, sho nough, I ain't gonna help you!"

"Oh you can help if you wanna." he answered with some tension in his voice, not looking back. Anyone who had ever done this job would understand, you don't take your eyes off what your doing, even for a second. Unless you like bleeding.

"That's why I have employees on my staff Onkey, and if I may, why we use induction cooling." J quiped.

"Yeah, like got tons of options here." Onas said slowly. J got a cigerette out and picked up Onas' ancient Zippo lighter. He began striking it rapidly, but the uncomplicated machine yeilded no fire.

"Dont Do It Like That!" Onas yelled, "Stop it, you'll ruin the flint."

"I'll stick to my electric lighters." Justin commented as Onas snatched the lighter from him.

"This works fine, you just strike it once." Onas said, but it took him two or three strikes.

"Uh-huh."

"It's only cause you wore it down, there. See?" he said with a final heavy slow strike, and thus, fire was produced.

"Anyway, I come down here to see if you wanned somethin to eat?" J asked taking a few puffs off his cigerette.

"What are my options." Onas joked slowly, as he was back to his work.

"Well on the menu today you have a choice of three dishes." His brother suplimented.

"Do I?"

"Why yes, the chef's specialty is; Chicken and rice flavored protien, also we have a lovely Chicken and rice flavored protien ala carte, and the third, and final choice, would be chicken and rice flavored protien flambe." Justin said with a smirk on his face.

"I don't know," Onas said slowly, smiling, "This sounds a 'lil familiar. It seems like I had one of these gourmet meals recently."

"Oh that's not a possibility sir, for the chef has only recently added these to the menu."

"No, I'm pretty sure I had it allready. Shhhhhiiii..." Onas quickly put his fingertip in his mouth, and then removed it flexing his hand. He looked at his brother who was chuckling at him, "Your distracting me."

"I'm only here to help." Justin said, looking satisfied with himself, "My work here is done."

Nick strolled into the engine room with Alice. He was smoking one of his cigars, Onas liked smoking cigerettes fine, but smoking cigars like that back to back hurt his throat, but to each his own. "Gentelmen, good morning, good morning."

Alice piped up, "Sounds like were missin all the fu..." she looked at the coolant tank progression, and seeing as this was one of her specialties, she turned on her heal, "Well I've gotta do the thing at the place, be seein ya."

"Hey Alice, The bossman sure looks like he could use a hand, and since this is your area of expertise, I nominate you!" Justin said.

Nick laughed, "I second that motion!"

Onas didn't miss a beat, he yanked up his shock-proof drill and pounded the steel floor, "Motion Carries!"

"Damnit!" Alice trudged back into the room defeated, "Overuled again." She took a seat on the floor next to Onas, "No gloves?"

"What's the point?"

"Point taken, gimme the drill sissy."

Even with Alice's help, the job took the rest of the day. The group left them too it, and the two continued working with intermitant conversation for hours. Justin brought back the promised meal, and they had a few more laughs, but for the most part, it was just slow tedious work. They finished up shop about seven that evening, and the coolent system came to life just fine. Alice gave Onas some ointment for his cuts, and they put that one in the win colume.

The rest of the week, and all of the next continued like this, and the crew finished the remaining tasks. Everyone was itching to see the ship come to life, and it was talked about more and more as the last offical work-week came to a close. Nick came to Onas about it that friday, mid-morning, after he had finished with the subroutines.

"I got some good news and some bad news boss." Nick said.

"Gimme the good." he replied.

"We got the paint, and I got it wholesale. Score one for the silver tongue." Nick said.

"There was a woman involved huh?" Onas asked smiling, not even bothering to look up. "What's the bad?"

"Have I become that transparent?" Nick laughed.

"Yes." Justin said throwing in his two cents.

"The bad is the same bad we've had for a month."

"The coils right. I got some idea's for that one." Onas said wiping his greasy hands on a dark red rag.

"You've figured out how to come up with close to fourty grand in two weeks?" Justin asked. This was in reference to the crew. Most of them had commitments coming up, and they all wanted some time off. Nick had aloted a week for ten of them to paint the ship, and a little time to work out any last minute problems.

"I'm gonna go see Jack, see if I can drum up some work. If that fails, then it's all good. I can install simple coil packs by myself." Onas commented almost casually.

"You know better than that, I'll be here to help you till it's done bro." Nick said, his tone was noticably changed despite his kind words.

"And I appreciate that." Onas said as he and Nick exchanged an odd silent moment.

Justin missed something important here. "Your going to see who?" he asked his brother directly.

Nick answered for him, "Jack Briggs. He's not yur kinna peep J, Your sure about this OJ?"

"Yeah... I've thought about it plenty. I don't see any other options. Not if we're gonna hit our deadline."

"Well yeah." Nick said, he seemed at a loss for words.

"Is he a criminal or what?" Justin asked.

"Odd question for present company," Onas jeered.

Nick was suddenly very seriouse. "No it isn't Onas, he ain't that kinda criminal."

"What kinda 'criminal' is he?" Justin asked, the conversation taking a darker tone.

"Slow down guys," Onas calmed them, "He's squared away, he's fine. Nick, I wouldn't do it if I didn't think it was a legitemant option."

"Ok, who is Jack Briggs, a killer?" His brother asked getting nervouse. Helping Onas with some stolen parts was one thing, but Justin wasn't on this side of the fence. Nick and Onas would have words about this in private.

"Nicknames 'Trigger'" Nick said in a grave tone.

"Seriously," Justin looked at Onas untill he was forced to look him in the eyes. Justin's eyebrows arced.

"This conversation is over." Onas said setting his rag down on the gangbox, and turning to his brother, "I made you a promise. I will honor it."

"You remeber you said that. I will." Justin's stare was unbreakable.