Day Four

The sparks flew from the end of her beam-saw. She wanted a gun. All she had were tools.

This was unacceptable.

With a critical eye she gazed down the length of pipe she'd just cut. The parts of the emergency pod she couldn't fix were certainly parts-fodder, so that's what she was doing. Stripping them down first, organizing them after, and deciding what they were useful for later. Better to have all the parts she needed before she started working, or at least that was the logic of the moment.

In truth, she was just bored and cutting things off her useless lump of an escape craft was marginally more fun than sitting around and waiting for the next carnivore to wander by. That was unacceptable too.

All she wanted was gun.

Well, and to be rescued.

And to hit Marr-ek with the front grill of a moving speeder.

Not necessarily in that order...

Unfortunately, she couldn't do anything about the last two, so gun was way up on her priority list. Especially after the raptor incident; feeling helpless was not something she enjoyed. There would be no encore of the wilting damsel act. No way. NOT going to happen.

So here she was, assembling a bits bin for later conversion into a weapon. She already had a nicely serviceable spear. That had been easy. One support rod, a jagged section of broken transparent steel window, and the omni-bonder from the toolkit made crafting that primitive weapon very easy. It would serve if she needed it to, but it wasn't enough.

She was not really a melee person. This fighting something close enough to smell its fetid breath was so very not her style. Truthfully, she preferred targets to be asleep, unawares, or who were fighting someone else all together. She never started fights, but she had no inclinations towards having the ones she had to take part in be honorable ones.

Ambush? Perfectly acceptable. Surprise? So much the better. Tranq darted into submission and unsure what planet they were on? Perfect.

To Trill's way of thinking, she'd rather not hurt anyone. Ever. But life didn't seem to give her that option. Therefore, if fighting was inevitable, the longer the range and the better her odds made her all the happier. And for her to have either of those things in her favor, she needed just one little thing.

A gun.

It didn't have to be a blaster. A slugthrower or even an old fashioned laser would be just fine. Anything that projected pain at a distance greater than dinosaur "eat me" range would do right now.

Sadly, her options looked slim. With only scrap, loose wiring, and the occasional bit of piping to choose from, there wasn't much to work with. She sighed, stood up, and tapped the side of her cutting tool against her temple. Think, Trillinae, think! Nothing here even had power, much less any kind of kill power. What franging use were tools when there was nothing to build with them?!

Here she had a perfectly good set of tools, everything from meson drills and hydrospanners to beam saws and laser cutters, and there weren't enough raw materials to build a folding chair, much less a dependable firearm. It was so damn frustrating!

All these great tools and nothing to do with them. They might as well have been rocks and sticks, since what use was a lasing array when the toughest thing she had on hand to slice apart was sheet stee...

Wait.

Beam. Saw. Laser. Cutter. Meson. Franging. Drills.

Twitch.

Trill spent the next five minutes banging her head off the wall, saying "Idiot!" in every language she knew.

Then she spent the rest of the day cannibalizing tools she didn't need into something ridiculously violent...