As the Captain headed aft the sounds of rattling, banging and a steady stream of curses in a mush of languages reverberated along the hall. The Firefly class of ships were persnickety enough in the first place but with an ailing port compression coil on top of an old engine made Tristan Firestone's job harder. The port compression coil, when it was working, made sure that the ship wouldn't rattle itself apart in the Black and blow itself to pieces.<br/><br/>Any mechanic worth their credits had heard enough horror stories of busted life support and engines that left ships, and their crews dead in the water. It was taking all of Tristan's skill to keep them flying until they had reached Beaumonde. Now he was trying to piece together a workable fix which had dry docked them for longer then he and the crew would have liked. So far, he wasn't making much headway.<br/><br/>Unless he wanted<i>tian fuhn di fu</i>the Cap'n had better be a mite more patient with him. As the Captain finished speaking the mechanic popped up behind the engine. His jump suit and face was liberally streaked with grease and some of it had smeared into his wavy black hair. His grey eyes flashed with annoyance as what he thought as his own domain was invaded.<br/><br/>"And I told ye that a faulty port compression coil would take some time to patch!" The man's voice was heated and he seemed to be working his way into one of his fine rants before he exhaled and went back to work, talking as he did so. "I'm doing all I can here and Mena's out on salvage, we both have every damned day. Unless we can find something then we'll have to order the part which costs credits  none of us have. Do ye have any other suggestions Captain?" His voice was terse and he ignored the question of the oaty bar emblazoned on their boat. It was starting to become a bad joke amongst the crew.<br/><br/>(Translation: "tian fuhn di fu"- complete disarray or sheer pandemonium, literally "sky tumbles while earth turns over".)