Page 182 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

returning startled him and he went back to the Bridge. The Mechanoid he’d left up there was trying
to keep track of the consoles reactivating.

“You should have main power now Trok. However I still haven’t found the restart for the gravity
plating” Michael announced adding. “The life support and atmospherics are slowly returning to
normal. I’m staying in the suit till they do. The air mix is very standard; slightly less nitrogen with a
tiny bit more oxygen, eminently breathable” he finished and went back to trying to fix the gravity
plating.
“We copy that Michael; did you get that Veklaar?” Trok responded. Krysta confirmed and agreed to
send over some techs and engineers as soon as the pressurisation was complete. Trok and the two
Mechanoids examined the two fire damaged pods to see how they could be extracted intact for
shipment back to the Veklaar. “I’d hold off on the gravity plating a while Michael. It’d make it easier
to move these pods” Trok said

“Don’t worry I have an idea about that. The suit is capable of short flights. I could probably tow them
back to the Veklaar right into the Hangar bay” Michael chuckled. Hubris warbled; “Looks like we
have a convert to the suit” he said and laughed loudly.

Once the derelicts hull was repaired and re-pressurised; various other crew members paid
the ship visits. T’luha being one of the first of the “biologicals” to get aboard headed straight to the
Bridge. Trok and Michael; who was now out of the suit, were setting up the recording equipment to
download the ships logs. They were using the new Bio-Memory “Gel” packs from Venosia Prime.

“As long as we keep the transfer rate steady there shouldn’t be any problems. We have to do it this
way as we are uncertain how the systems could react to taking out the discs.” Michael was saying as
T’luha entered.

“I saw some techs taking inspection plates off the power conduit channels; is there some risk of
instability?” she asked Trok.

“No; we need to do a few tests on active conduits to monitor how the ship regulates its power grid.
Unlike the Kryst Probe; the ship uses distributed regulator cylinders at node points around the grid.
It appears from what we’ve seen off the Engineers reports that it was two of these regulation nodes
that blew in the drive module. He and two other crewman were in that section when the blow out
occurred!” He replied “It sent surges all over the ship blowing out fusible links in several key
supplies. One of which seems to have been the gravity plating control” he added.

“A surge would also account for the two carbonised crew found in the escape pods. Doc found trace
remains of a fourth crewmember in the corridor of the accommodation section in the sphere. With
the missing escape pods that accounts for most of the crew. Doc Stenerton reckons that the two
“crispies” were females. It looks like it was a mixed sex crew; probably couples or pairs.” T’luha said.

“We’re hoping the ships Engineering and Navigation logs can shed some light as to why they were in
orbit around Keera” Michael said and continued to monitor the data transfer. Trok and T’luha went
to Engineering; T’luha eager to get a close up view of the Kryst Polaron generator technology. She
had seen early theses on this power system in the Unity Archives. It had been a common power
system to replace carbon or Fossil fuel power generation in the early stages of many worlds’
civilisations. Those early attempts proved highly unstable and volatile; explosions and reactor
meltdowns proved common and deadly; leading to abandonment in favour of more stable cold-
fusion systems. The Kryst; however, seemed to have not only mastered the technology but greatly
improved upon it. They seemed to have solved most of the major stability issues as well.

The ships drive units were fascinating. Each one was more than capable of powering the ship
to extremely high warp speeds. The ship had three of them and it looked like only one of them was