Tina is backed against the wall, looking very small and scared, almost completely blocked from view by—

—a well-dressed bald man with a salt-and-pepper beard, who is definitely much too far into Tina's personal space, although it's hard to tell from this angle whether he's actually touching her or just threatening to. He glances back at Erika when she makes her dramatic entrance.

Erika has momentum, paranoid adrenaline, and combat experience. She grabs him by the shirt collar, yanking him the hell away from Tina and all but throwing him to the floor several feet away.

If he has enough self-defense training he can probably fall right to not hit his head against the metal floor of the engine room. There's not much he can do about the rest of it.

Tina covers her face with her hands, muffling a terrified squeak.

The man on the floor does not look pleased by this turn of events.

"You've made some interesting friends, Tina. Why don't you introduce me?"

Nope nope nope.

"My name is Erika Lehnsherr." She somehow manages to make the name sound like a threat. "Who the fuck are you and what do you think you're doing on this ship."

He gets up and dusts himself off.

"Obadiah Stane. Visiting an old friend."

"I have heard that name before. Tina, would it improve your quality of life any if I killed this man as opposed to simply evicting him."

"What - w-where did you -"

"I was feeling restless and walking around and I heard something worrying and I got closer and heard you tell him 'no' in a tone of voice suggesting he wouldn't listen."

"He never does."

"That's hardly fair," he says. "I've done so much for your family, and this is how you repay me?"

"You destroyed my family," she snaps, goaded out of her frozen terror.

She smiles.

It's not a nice smile.

She picks up a wrench and tosses it a few times, letting it flip a few times in the air between smacking back into her palm.

She shoves him to the floor again, kneels down over Stane's horizontal body, and brings it down across his ribs with a sickening crack.

"When someone says no," she says, "you stop. When you hurt someone, you don't act like they owe you. And when you work for the same Alliance that murdered an entire planet, and a woman in a brown coat offers to kill you, you don't act like she's not a threat."

He grunts with pain, but -

"I bet—you never told them—you're a Stark," he manages to gasp in Tina's direction.

Tina shrinks back against the wall and hides her face again.

Erika gives him a brief considering look.

Then she smashes the wrench into his skull.

"Are you okay?" Erika asks after a moment. "I--could've given you a warning to get out of the room and not have to see that. I--wasn't thinking clearly. I'm sorry."

Yeah she's back to the 'frozen in terror' thing again.

She looks at the wrench in her hand and the man lying dead on the floor. She drops the wrench. It falls tho the floor with a banging clatter.

She curls up, putting her head between her knees. "Fuck," she breathes, "fuck, fuck, fuck."

Well then they can both freak out!

Yes. That's what's going to happen for a while.

Eventually she uncurls and takes a deep breath and stands up and--looks at the still-frozen mechanic. "Fuck, I'm sorry," she says quietly. For lack of a better idea she starts pacing, incidentally taking her away from being directly between Tina and the door.

She - manages to un-freeze a little.

"Someone would've known where he was going," she says softly. "They won't - won't miss him for a few hours but -"