Virgil rubbed the side of his nose as he got to the junk yard. Well, it might as well be a junk yard. All the ships here were damaged, broken or just simply refused to work. Or not even ship shaped anymore, just piles of scrap. Not even useful scrap, things like broken power converters and bent bolts.

Virgil winced and rubbed his nose again. He always got a twinge in his face after he did... whatever that was. It wasn't natural, that was for sure. No natural humanoid should be able to leap over train tracks from a good few paces away and land on two feet. It just wasn't right.

Shaking his head, Virgil hit a button on the underside of his ship. With a whoosh of air, the landing slide hit the ground with a thump. Virgil sighed.

"That needs to be smoother." He noted in his head.

He'd found a shell of a ship twelve years ago, when he'd arrived on T-3.5, and had done nothing but fix it up. Most of it had to be cleared out. The wiring was all blown, like it'd been set on fire or something, and the outer shell was coming off in bits. And the shields. More like what shields? All blown. Probably from jumping to Light Speed too fast but who knows.

Virgil jogged up the landing slide, his bag clutched close to him, and hit a button on the ceiling of the ship.

The landing slide gave a groan and started to slowly retract in and up. About half-way up, it juddered to a stop. Virgil rolled his eyes and hit the closing button again. The slide groaned with protest and didn't move.

"C'mon, seriously?" Virgil snapped. He sighed and grabbed a hook from beside the door. "I thought we're done wi'that now."

Virgil hooked one end of the hook onto the slide's rim and the other onto a lever by the door. Then, he hit the button again and started to pull the lever along the wall.

The landing slide closed with a crunch and the hook snapped off the rim. Virgil blew a breath up through his fringe and snatched the hook off the ship.

"There." He said, glaring round at the ship. "Wa'that so hard? Huh?"

He rolled his eyes and checked his bag. Everything was still there. Great.

"C'mon, then. Let's see what we can do for ya today." He muttered. Probably to the ship but who knew at this point.

Virgil tapped the wall as he walked along the corridor. Both out of habit and to find where the engine hatch was. Twelve years on this damn ship and he still couldn't remember where the most important room in the whole thing was.

A hollow clang sounded. Virgil crouched down and hooked his fingers under the uneven tiling. The tile slid away easy enough, letting up a cloud of dust and the smell of metal. Virgil pulled his mask up over his nose and mouth.

How did the engine room always get so dusty? Virgil dropped down into the dimness, his eyes quickly growing used to it.

Disconnected wires lay across the floor like dead snakes, some spurting sparks like meaningless threats and others dead and dark. The connected wires hung down in huge dips, bolted to the wall or ceiling. A single engine took up most of the cramped space, humming quietly. All around it sat all sorts of junk, laser glass, parts of shield, bolts and nuts, cappers and anything else Virgil had collected in the market. Some of them were fixed, most were half-way between being actually useful and complete junk and others were simply just broken.

Virgil coughed a little and waved away any dust hanging around his head. He grabbed his torch band out of the front pocket of his bag and switching it on, shining the pale beam over todays collection.

Well, todays steals but it was much the same thing.

Virgil sat down crossed-legged in the middle of all this junk and grabbed a screwdriver from beside a dead fuel wire.

"Mkay." He muttered. "Let's see if we can getcha up and runnin' today."

Bit of a shorter chapter than yesterday but I'm quite proud of it.
Bye,
Blaize