The Nori was humming with the buzz of a hundred mechanics. The orchestra of metal cutting, drilling, shearing, folding, welding and the hurried footsteps of the busy was led by a man so enthused by it seemed that with a flick of his wrist entire sections of the Nori were being cut up and made new again in the blink of an eye; Schrotti. Schrotti was not a man of many words, he never needed to be, he had a stick, and it could express a thousand words by making a simple figure in the air. Sometimes accompanied by a hearty shout. The 'Pit Crew', they all lived together in an actual pit, hence the name, knew what their boss wanted from them at all times. It wasn't very complicated. Schrotti never demanded unreasonable work from them, and they were the best of the best. They had been forged in the scrapyard fury of Haradhere. A typical 'Pit Crew' mechanic had to go through multiple stages of 'education'. They all started as dregs, unwanted children, abandoned husbands, galactic refugees that barely knew how to hold a spoon. The galactic way of life did that to its citizens, they had become entirely detached from technology. Most of them, at the beginnings of their careers as scrappers, marvelled even at the complexity of a toaster. By the time Schrotti was done with them, they could disassemble a gravity drive, or any other type of faster than light travel engine for that matter, with their eyes closed and in the case of the upper echelons of the 'Pit Crew', build one from a couple of thousand toasters.
Spirited shouts like; 'careful with that you moron' were briefly cutting through the general noise as Schrotti made his way through the ship.
George and Schrotti were a match made in heaven. George came with a solid background in spaceship engineering and was a natural in marketing while Schrotti was unsurpassed in his ability to reuse and recycle. They were having a conversation in their newly erected base of operations in the Nori's re purposed cargo bay.
'So what's the problem with the quantum-field-antimatter-dark-energy-lorentz-superposition-flux- generator?'
'Nothing, it's old, stupid tech. We would be better off without it.' Schrotti responded.
'So we get rid of it?'
'If I were as wasteful with my stuff as you are with yours we'd long be broke.'
'What's that supposed to mean?'
'Means that just because something is old and doesn't have a purpose it, can still be useful, just like you.'
'Pff'
'I'm not that old'
'I'm not sure how the whole ageing thing works for your species, but I can hear your bones creak when you move.'
'At least I have bones and ain't a spineless blob like you'
George and Schrotti didn't particularly like each other but made of their existing relationship nonetheless.
'So what do you suppose we do with the thing?'
'This is a pirate ship, isn't it? We could try and make some sort of weapon out of it. Could be fun.'
They went on to babble about when Blomar and Kumar entered the workshop.
'Ah Blomi, how's the shield generator acquisition coming along?'
'It's Captain Blomar for you techie' Kumar cut him off.'
'Oh calm your horses Kumar, we are at Jorge's mercy here.'
'That's right little pea counter man, swallow it all like the good little piss drain you are.'
'Enough George! We are not here for you to insult my subordinates.' Blomar set him straight.
Schrotti, being an elderly Blob-person whose full name was actually Scrappy MacGruffins, was feeling his contours shifting from the cringe. These bickering bi-pedals were a pain to be around, they put George on edge, and he liked a blunt George, a sharp George was almost unbearably annoying for him to be around. So he while shifting his from blob to something resembling an upright watery hairless monkey, he shifted the conversations focus with it.
'Alright, Captain Blomar' He said,' my men have begun work on the structural reinforcement of the Nori's frame. We have installed several weapon mounts, cut a good part of the cargo-bay hulls belly to trim and used the gained material to mostly thicken the ships nose cone plating. For now, she is a bit front heavy, but we are planning to give her flanks the same treatment to balance her out. When we are done you will probably be able to ram her into other ships like a pickaxe.'
'Now that sounds like something I wanted to hear!'
Kumar and George were still eying each other but kept quiet about it.
Schrotti went on about how the reactor would need extra shielding and how the net weight increase would demand additional thrusters to keep the Nori's maneuverability up to par, and other things, but his audience quickly lost interest on account of not being able to keep up or contribute to the conversation. Of course George knew what he was talking about, but he had other things on his mind ...
They disbanded their meeting after George and Schrotti handed Kumar, with Blomar's blessings, a list of parts they couldn't source on their own.