Page 187 - The Chronicles Ser2 (6-10)

“Ah yes! I hadn’t thought of that. You see if you can find the frequency of that unit and I’ll find it for
this one. It’s unlikely they’ll be the same; but with the Kryst… Who knows what they might do?” Trok
replied.

Michael and Hubris had gone back to the Kryst ship. The repair systems had been
exceptionally thorough; the vessel was flight ready now. Hubris was eager to try the flight controls
and run an engine test, but Michael persuaded him to hold off till they could run a diagnostic. It was
still not obvious what had caused the explosion that had disabled the ship in the first place. No trace
of the original conduits or power linkages had been found. Two Mechanoids were assigned to do
that. In the mean time the two of them set about working out some of the ship’s engineering logs.
The ships Engineer had used a peculiar form of Kryst shorthand. One last entry was underlined in
red. When translated it was a single word… “Retarder? I wonder what that means; there’s no
evidence that any such device was fitted to this drive unit. I wonder if it could be a reference to one
of the other Kryst factions mentioned in the Genetics Laboratory database we found on She’brakda.”
Michael said puzzled.

“Speaking of She’brakda; I wonder how Jenifer and the rest are getting on. We haven’t heard from
them in a few days. They were expecting some desert storms to pass through the region” Hubris said
in an absent minded fashion.

“It’s possible that their coms arrays have suffered damage, though they do have at least three back-
ups. I saw to that before the Veklaar left for Keera.” Michael replied. Hubris tried a low current
through the main power conduit. Michael monitored the readings. Suddenly there was a drop in the
plasma flow. “That’s odd to say the least. It appears that that circuit is the culprit.” He said and
pointed to a removable crystalline panel. “That doesn’t look like it should be in that position at all.

Perhaps the Captain was right about sabotage” He
added.

“It would appear so. I’ve seen something similar
elsewhere on the ship. It was in one of the sleeping
quarters…” Hubris said and grabbed Michael by the arm
and dragged him along the mid-section of the ship to the
circular corridor. He scanned the walls looking for
something. “It was in this compartment I believe” He
announced and operated the door mechanism. They
entered and looked around the room. Hubris shouted
“Eureka!” and headed over to a recessed wall unit. He pressed the corner of a panel and it popped
open. He slid out the drawer and inside it could be seen a number of the same circuits in a series of
slots. One slot was empty.
“I’d give you odds of a hundred to one that the circuit you have in your hand fits into this console.”
Hubris said enthusiastically. Michael looked around and found a second circuit carelessly discarded
near the hexagonal bed.

“The one we removed has a grey edge piece like those in the console. This one has a green edge
piece.” Michael noted “The internal circuitry is remarkably similar. Michael put the grey edged
circuit into the empty slot. The console fired up and a holographic recording played from a device in
the centre of a nearby panel. It looked like a recording of a Kryst using some tool to program one of
the circuits from one of the Drive units Power nodes. The Kryst was small; probably a female; it was
hard to tell as the recording was indistinct. It looked as if the female was disturbed by something
and left in a hurry. Putting the grey circuit into the slot where she’d removed the one she was using
the tool on from. The image on the recording shuddered before whiting out and the recording
ended. Michael noted that the female dropped something near to a doorway as she departed. He
pointed out the location to Hubris.