Freelance Traveller

Kyllikki Leppällä

profiled by Terry Gardner

Kyllikki Leppällä 77BAA6 Age 28 Cr300
2½ terms Merchant (O-2 Asst. Engr.)
Engineering-3, Gravitics-2, Mechanical-1, VaccSuit-1, Electronics-1, Gun Cbt (Pistol)-0, Grav Vehicle-0, Computer-0
Tool Chest (Engineering), Autopistol.
Home world: Shanape (Matarishan/Ley 1023) B4379BD-D

Kyllikki Leppällä was born on 320-1085 on the Imperial world Shanape in the Matarishisan subsector of the Ley sector. Kyllikki grew up in a house full of men who are engineers and technicians. From an early age she found enjoyment and beauty in the intricate mechanical workings of complex machines.

Shanape is a training ground for the Imperial military and is rigidly controlled. Kyllikki’s world is one where women are expected to fill subservient roles and be mothers and wives, not mechanics and technicians. Obedience and knowing one’s place is the normal way on Shanape. The government is extremely strict and society heavily militarized. Kyllikki’s interests were seen as rebellious and unacceptable by them.

Fortunately for her, her parents and brothers thought otherwise. She often got to work on old machines with her father and he would often take her along when he worked on starships or other craft saying he had to watch his daughter for the day. At home, she secretly built robots and fixed everyone’s computer.

School was a chore for her. She was forced into taking ‘female appropriate’ classes which she found boring and hated. In the mandatory paramilitary training clubs for girls she went through the motions to avoid trouble. Most of the other girls her age shunned or ignored her.

Stuck on a world where girls wear dresses and are expected to be quiet, demur, and subservient Kyllikki was definitely a square peg. For that she paid a heavy price in punishment by teachers and other adult authority figures.

In spite of the obstacles thrown in her path, Kyllikki continued to learn about mechanics and electronics. She befriended several of the academic minded boys at school and got them to let her help with their projects covertly.

Physically, Kyllikki is your average looking brunette. She is 164 cm tall and a bit ’top heavy.’ She lacks good fashion sense and has an aversion to wearing clothing that is too feminine. With those she trusts she is friendly and tends to be open and innocent. She is completely naive in social settings. Give her some piece of machinery to puzzle through and fix and she becomes very excited and talkative to the point you are getting way too much information about whatever it is she’s fixing.

All through school Kyllikki could hardly wait to graduate. Her mind was firmly fixed on escaping Shanape. She dreamed of being a chief engineer, a real Chief Engineer, on a starship someday.

Upon graduating, Ikki (E-key), as her few friends call her, begged her way into a job with an off world shipping firm aboard a small packet freighter that plied between local star systems as an apprentice engineer. They were desperate and so was she. Finding the routine boring and the pay low she moved to a Far Trader where she stayed for two years before the owner had to let her go when his business fell on hard times.

Ikki, having little choice, went back to small trade lines on packet freighters where she started. She often found herself the only engineer aboard, and thus became very skilled at fixing older, poorly maintained vessels, much to their captains’ delight. She developed a reputation for being able to fix just about any ship’s system, no matter how decrepit it might be, among a small circle of captains who knew her.

Ikki scraped up the money to complete and get her official Imperial certification as an Assistant Engineer. She found, however, that she just couldn’t get the funds together to pay for testing at higher ratings. The captains of the ships she was on could never afford to pay her for these tests, either (not that they really wanted to, as this might mean losing her to better paying ships). This meant she couldn’t get the bigger shipping firms to hire her, something those captains also knew. So, she was stuck with small lines and independent ships like far and free traders.

This whole time Ikki spent as much of what little money she made as she could buying tools. Her massive tool chest is her single most prized possession. “An engineer can never have too many tools!” she’d tell you.

Ikki loves to shop for tools and the like. She is enamored by technology and engineering problems. She is not good at combat but does have a pistol for protection.

Ikki has a mischievous streak too. She willingly goes along with criminal plans so long as no one is getting hurt physically. She will listen in on private conversations and enjoys “secrets” and doing things like playing pranks on others.

During the entire time Ikki was on small packet ships, she longed to get back into the more free-wheeling excitement of Far and Free Trading on a ship that wasn’t desperate and taking her as a last resort. The problem for Ikki was that many captains wouldn’t take a chance and hire a female mechanic or engineer; particularly one who was dressed in shabby canvas coveralls or other work clothes. For Ikki it seemed that Fate simply had it in for her.

She finally got her chance on Varakanomu in the Mariposa system when she met Kai Lei Hao, Captain of the far trader Daichi Kaisu. Captain Hao seemed like a good bet as far trader captains went. She was well dressed and her ship was clean. It was in pretty good shape for its age, and it was undergoing a lot of repairs and upgrades. That made Ikki think that Captain Hao must have some money.

Captain Hao apparently had funds to regularly pay her crew! That was way better than many far and free traders offered. Most captains wanted you to take a cut of any profits made during the voyage. That was so much way better than the decrepit freighter she was currently on. For Ikki it was like a chance at parole for a prisoner.

What really got Ikki’s attention, though, was that Captain Hao offered her an official Imperial certification as an Engineer with all the proper paperwork and seals! Ikki was so excited at the prospect of being a “real” Chief Engineer that she readily agreed to sign on. In her excitement she didn’t bother to think or ask about how Captain Hao, the lowly Captain of a far trader, had the juice to get such paperwork done in such a short time with few questions asked. Ikki also forgot to ask Captain Hao where she was planning on going seeing as how she had never been outside Imperial space. All she could think of was getting to work on a modern starship as the Chief Engineer!

Ikki spends much of her time in the engineering spaces on the Daichi Kaisu. But, she also can be found fixing this or that system elsewhere on the ship. She has even set up her own “stateroom” in the upper level of the engine room rather than staying up in the crew quarters much of the time. As she’d tell you, the Daichi Kaisu is her ship and it’s so “shiny!”